L'homme aux yeux clairs

Blue Blazes Rawden (1918)

** (out of 4)

A rather bizarre remake of Hart's very own HELL'S HINGES has the Western location changed to the mountains and his cowboy changed to a lumberjack. In the film Hart plays Blue Blazes Rawden, a tough lumberjack who ends up killing a man (Robert McKim) over an Indian girl (Maude George). Things take a tricky turn when the dead man's mother and brother come to see him and Hart starts to feel guilty. He decides to tell the family that their son was a great man and he warns those around him not to let them know the truth about who killed him. I was really surprised to see how much plot this thing stole from HELL'S HINGES and it's so much so that you can easily call this a remake. There's even a card game here where Hart gets taken advantage of and has his weapon stole in the same fashion as what was used in THE SILENT MAN. As you can tell, there's really nothing here too original and changing the setting to the mountains really doesn't work either as most of the time everything is so over the top that you can't help but laugh. This includes Hart's performance in a way. He's certain strong enough for the part but there are a couple scenes that he goes so far over the top that I found myself laughing. This here adds some minor charm but I doubt this was the effect the filmmakers were going for. There are a couple good fight sequences and a few nice visuals but none of this is able to overshadow the flaws. I'm really not sure why Hart's screenplay followed the previous films so closely but it was a mistake and it doesn't help that HELL'S HINGES was so incredibly good because there's just no way this film could live up to it.

Just watched today at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles,Ca. It was a new restoration so it was watched as it was originally. The movie ran and was accompanied by live piano music. For someone who has only watched old silent movies that have been duped many times, the movie was a real treat. The best part was the scenery. The creation of the weather and sets was so real I felt chills from the snow. People who gave the film a poor rating should watch it again under the same circumstances as I did and then update their review.

The part I wished there was more of was title cards so I could have followed the action better. I guess he thought the minimal cards he had was enough. If given an opportunity to watch it like I did go for it.

William S. Hart plays the foreman of a group of lumberjacks. They've just been paid for their last job and intend to have some fun in town. The owner of the local saloon is known as Ladyfingers (Robert McKim) and doesn't like the look of Rawden (Hart), nor does he like it when his girl (Maude George) defects to him. Rawden kills his rival in a duel, and not long afterward has to hide the circumstances of Ladyfingers' death when his mother and brother come to town.

Hart is playing to the rafters here in his fir cap. He treats George like a dog, patting her on the head, but she must like it because she goes to extremes to retain him. The mother's perceptions are wildly skewed when she compares her son's manliness to Hart's who was significantly larger then McKim. Jack Hoxie plays the bartender and resembles Lyle Talbot with bad teeth and a beard. The melodramatic story and histrionic acting conjure several unintentional laughs, but the outdoor photography is beautiful.

Hilarious comic take on Hart's patented Good Bad Man role sees him as a rough tough lumberjack, "Blue Blazes" Rawden -- apparently Hart's cameraman, Joe August, wanted to photograph primary forest, so they set it up that way.

When Hart kills saloon-owner-regular-villain Robert McKim, he inherits not only the saloon and McKim's girlfriend, but a mother who comes over from England to see her long lost boy. Soon everyone is in a conspiracy to not let mother know what a scalawag her son was, but when she announces she wants to take Rawden back to England with her, the girlfriend tries to spill the beans.

Apparently they didn't know what to do with this, so they tacked on an ending and sent it out. The result is a movie that experts call one of Hart's darkest tragedy. I disagree. Next time, guys, try running it through the projector a little faster and using a lighter touch on the keyboard.