Hell's Hinges
Encyclopedia
Hell's Hinges is a 1916 American Western
silent film starring William S. Hart
and Clara Williams
. Directed by Charles Swickard, William S. Hart and Clifford Smith, and produced by Thomas H. Ince
, the screenplay
was written by C. Gardner Sullivan
.
Rev. Henley is seduced by the dance-hall girl, Dolly (played by Glaum), and falls from grace as his sister, Faith, rehabilitates Blaze Tracey, who finds something special in her, and soon Miller and the others have Blaze to deal with.
Grace Kingsley of the Los Angeles Times gave the actors high marks. She credited Hart with doing his "usual excellent work" and found Glaum to be "a really fascinating vampire." Kingsley paid special note to Standing's performance as the reverend, calling it "one of the most subtle, but at the same time of the most sincere bits of film acting of his entire career," a performance exhibiting "intelligence and imagination ... in the very highest degree." Kingsley found the film to be "marvelously well done" but took exception with the awkward dialect in the title cards:
The publication Moving Picture World
gave the film as a whole a positive review: "Brilliant in subtitle, strong in treatment with occasional notes of true pathos, the marks of creative ability and sure craftmanship are there .... the cast is without flaw." The publication further noted that Ince "is at his best when holding close to revelations of the human mind and heart."
's 1939 Stagecoach," and "as emotionally powerful as any American film of the teens, except for the masterpieces of D.W. Griffith and Erich Von Stroheim
."
Two months after the showing in Chicago and Wilmington's review, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
In 1997, Film Comment
published a review calling Hell's Hinges a "classic of its kind" and arguing that "to dismiss it casually as a western would be a mistake, for it more resembles The Atonement of Gosta Berling than it does Riders of the Purple Sage
. The reviewer gave particular praise to Hart's directorial skill:
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
silent film starring William S. Hart
William S. Hart
William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...
and Clara Williams
Clara Williams
Clara Williams was an American silent film actress. Along with Louise Glaum and Dorothy Dalton, she was one of the principal leading ladies at Inceville, one of the first motion picture studios to make feature films in Los Angeles...
. Directed by Charles Swickard, William S. Hart and Clifford Smith, and produced by Thomas H. Ince
Thomas H. Ince
Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...
, the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
was written by C. Gardner Sullivan
C. Gardner Sullivan
C. Gardner Sullivan was an American screenwriter and motion picture producer. He was a prolific writer with more than 350 films among his credits. In 1924, the magazine Story World selected him on a list of the ten individuals who had contributed the most to the advancement of the motion picture...
.
Plot
Hell's Hinges tells the story of a minister, Rev. Bob Henley (played by Standing), who comes to a gunfighter-plagued town with his sister, Faith (played by Williams). The owner of the saloon, Silk Miller (played by Hollingsworth), and his accomplices sense trouble and hire gunman Blaze Tracy (played by Hart), the most dangerous man around, to run the minister out of town.Rev. Henley is seduced by the dance-hall girl, Dolly (played by Glaum), and falls from grace as his sister, Faith, rehabilitates Blaze Tracey, who finds something special in her, and soon Miller and the others have Blaze to deal with.
Cast
- William S. HartWilliam S. HartWilliam Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...
... Blaze Tracy - Clara WilliamsClara WilliamsClara Williams was an American silent film actress. Along with Louise Glaum and Dorothy Dalton, she was one of the principal leading ladies at Inceville, one of the first motion picture studios to make feature films in Los Angeles...
... Faith Henley - Jack StandingJack StandingJack Standing was an English actor.The brother of Wyndham Standing , who also was a famous actor in the early days of film, Jack Standing had first appeared in Broadway musicals such as The Belle of New York and Floradora before he went to the Biograph company in 1909...
... Rev. Robert Henley - Alfred Hollingsworth ... Silk Miller
- Robert McKimRobert McKim (actor)Robert McKim was an American actor of the silent era. He appeared in 99 films between 1915 and 1927. He is best remembered for playing the arch villain opposite Douglas Fairbanks's Zorro in The Mark of Zorro in 1920. McKim also starred with Lon Chaney in the 1923 silent version of All The Brothers...
... A clergyman - J. Frank Burke ... Zeb Taylor
- Louise GlaumLouise GlaumLouise Glaum was an American actress. Best known for her role as a femme fatale in silent era motion picture dramas, she was credited with giving one of the best characterizations of a vamp in her early career....
... Dolly - John GilbertJohn Gilbert (actor)John Gilbert was an American actor and a major star of the silent film era.Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw...
... A rowdy cowboy (uncredited) - Jean HersholtJean HersholtJean Pierre Hersholt was a Danish-born actor who lived in the United States, where he was a leading film and radio talent, best known for his 17 years starring on radio in Dr. Christian and for playing Shirley Temple's grandfather in Heidi...
... A rowdy townsman (uncredited)
Initial reviews in 1916
When Hell's Hinges was released, the reception of the film among New York critics was so positive that the producer bought space in newspapers around the country to reprint the reviews. The following are excerpts from those reviews:- New York Telegraph: "Dramatic suspense and punch, coupled with artistic treatment, are the most conspicuous characteristics of 'Hell's Hinges' ... [A] swaggering, hard-drinking, fast-shooting, all-round 'bad' man, with good stuff under a rough exterior, furnished Mr. Hart with a vehicle in which his talents show to best advantage."
- New York American: "A well-balanced supporting cast, a lavish production and marked finesse in treatment combines to make 'Hell's Hinges' an unusual offering."
- New York Press: "Gunplay and religion lubricate 'Hell's Hinges' ... It is a film drama that combines all the elements that make for success ... Reckless riding, double-handed shooting from the hip, a dance hall of the Bret HarteBret HarteFrancis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.- Life and career :...
description and, finally a conflagration that gives a truly GehennaGehennaGehenna , Gehinnom and Yiddish Gehinnam, are terms derived from a place outside ancient Jerusalem known in the Hebrew Bible as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom ; one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City.In the Hebrew Bible, the site was initially where apostate Israelites and...
-like finish to the place known as Hell's Hinges ... No actor before the screen has been able to give as sincere and true a touch to the Westerner as Hart. He rides in a manner indigenous to the soil, he shoots with the real knack and he acts with that sense of artistry that hides the acting." - New York Sun: "It depicts strikingly the storm and stress of existence in a Western town with a final scene of the shooting up of a gambling den, which aroused the spectators to a high degree of approval."
- New York Herald: "William S. Hart is beginning to typify certain things in the film world. He is ever stoical, slow to anger, but possessed of the powers of a hundred men when aroused. He is a big, bluff, wholesome fellow, whose ideas are frequently a little peculiar, and he goes about matters in exclusively his own way. But when the showdown arrives, depend upon it, William S. Hart will be found lined up on the side of righteousness. This week, for example, Hart is appearing at the Knickerbocker Theatre in 'Hell's Hinges. Hart has the opportunity to do some good riding, to carry a drunken minister on his back, to shoot the villain and some sub-villains, to set the town afire and to marry the minister's sister. The Kaiser himself has appeared in pictures and done less."
- New York Herald: "'Hell's Hinges,' one of those traditional places on the frontier of the Wild West, 'where there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can get a thirst,' was pictured in the most lurid manner."
Grace Kingsley of the Los Angeles Times gave the actors high marks. She credited Hart with doing his "usual excellent work" and found Glaum to be "a really fascinating vampire." Kingsley paid special note to Standing's performance as the reverend, calling it "one of the most subtle, but at the same time of the most sincere bits of film acting of his entire career," a performance exhibiting "intelligence and imagination ... in the very highest degree." Kingsley found the film to be "marvelously well done" but took exception with the awkward dialect in the title cards:
"C. Gardner Sullivan appears to have written 'Hell's Hinges' for the purpose of allowing us to look our fill on fire and fights. Certain it is the thing is marvelously well done. There is a burning dance hall with men and women entrapped, which fairly makes you gasp, and there is a 'beau-oo-tiful' free-for-all fight between the sheep and the goats of 'Hell's Hinges.' All this is lovely enough in its way to make for forgiveness of the dialect of the subtitles, a dialect which 'never was on land or sea.'"
The publication Moving Picture World
The Moving Picture World
The Moving Picture World was an influential early trade journal for the American film industry, from 1907 to 1927. By 1914, it had a reported circulation of approximately 15,000.The publication was founded by James Petrie Chalmers, Jr...
gave the film as a whole a positive review: "Brilliant in subtitle, strong in treatment with occasional notes of true pathos, the marks of creative ability and sure craftmanship are there .... the cast is without flaw." The publication further noted that Ince "is at his best when holding close to revelations of the human mind and heart."
Later historical assessments
In September 1994, Hell's Hinges experienced a revival following a screening at the Film Center of the School of the Chicago Art Institute. At the time, the Chicago Tribunes movie critic, Michael Wilmington, called Hell's Hinges "Hart's acknowledged masterpiece," "perhaps the finest movie Western made before John FordJohn Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
's 1939 Stagecoach," and "as emotionally powerful as any American film of the teens, except for the masterpieces of D.W. Griffith and Erich Von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...
."
Two months after the showing in Chicago and Wilmington's review, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
In 1997, Film Comment
Film Comment
Film Comment is an arts and culture magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, of which it is the official publication. Film Comment features critical reviews and in-depth analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world...
published a review calling Hell's Hinges a "classic of its kind" and arguing that "to dismiss it casually as a western would be a mistake, for it more resembles The Atonement of Gosta Berling than it does Riders of the Purple Sage
Riders of the Purple Sage
Riders of the Purple Sage is Zane Grey's best-known novel, originally published in 1912. Most critics agree that it played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre.- Plot in a paragraph :...
. The reviewer gave particular praise to Hart's directorial skill:
"The camera placement here, the simple yet effective symbolism, and the flair for spectacle as in the brilliantly handled mob scenes where all of Inceville goes up in smoke, the real 'feel' of the old, dusty, unglamorised West, all should have earned Hart a reputation as one of the great directors. ... For the most part, 'Hell's Hinges' offers highpowered drama rather than traditional western action. ... Fine camerawork utilising long panoramic shots, excellent cutting and a sure control over the masses of extras fuse this into an episode of astonishing vigor. Hart, his assistant Cliff Smith, his writer Gardner Sullivan and cameraman Joe August were one of the sturdiest (and least appreciated) teams of craftsmen the cinema ever produced."
In popular culture
In 2009, the band Caledonia Mission wrote a song for Esopus magazine inspired by the movie. The song is named "The Ballad of Blaze Tracy."External links
- Hell's Hinges at the National Film Preservation FoundationNational Film Preservation FoundationThe National Film Preservation Foundation is an independent, nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America’s film heritage. Growing from a national planning effort led by the Library of Congress, the NFPF began operations in 1997. It supports activities nationwide that...