Hell Bent

Harry Carey

Hell Bent is one of twenty five or so Western features John Ford and Harry Carey churned out for Universal Pictures between 1917 and 1921. A prologue indicates that the two compadres wanted to vary the formula that they had established. An author opens a letter from his publisher criticizing the one dimensional nature of his literary hero and daring him to write a book with a more ambivalent protagonist. The action of the film springs from this dare. The author gazes at Frederic Remington's painting The Misdeal which changes into Ford's recreation of the painting and signals the start of the actual film. The picture then follows the adventures of Carey's usual hero, Cheyenne Harry. This time Harry is a reprobate who is soused for nearly half of the film. However, Harry is emboldened on the path to virtue when he has to rescue his beloved, Bess (Neva Gerber).

Frederic Remington's The Misdeal

Ford was a longtime admirer of Remington's work and admitted to Peter Bogdanovich that he copied the painter when he made She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, so it is especially heartening to see this film once thought lost displaying Ford tipping his cap to the Western artist. The film, found in a Czech archive six years ago, is a slight and truncated affair, only running 50 or so minutes. The story may be pat, but the picture is visually exciting. Ford's vivid use of landscapes, chiaroscuro, and emotionally evocative close-ups are all in evidence. Hell Bend also contains more depth of characterization than most films double its length. We even get to see Harry Carey do his charachteristic arm rub that John Wayne mimics, in tribute, at the end of The Searchers.

Hell Bent is so frisky and loose-limbed that if it had been released in 1968, it would have been considered an anti-Western. The images on the Kino Lorber DVD are startingly clear for a century old film. The disc also contains a video essay by the great Tag Gallagher whose 1986 biography of Ford is still the best book on the subject. Gallagher notes how the Universal films were filled with the players that formed Ford's first stock company and how many of those players would reappear in Ford films in the sound era. Hell Bent is not only an important part of film history, but an enjoyable film on its own. I'm all revved up to watch the newly found Ford-Carey collaboration, The Scarlet Drop.