The Tiger Man

William S. Hart is a vicious outlaw. He has just escaped from jail and spots a party of missionaries on their way to convert the heathen Catholics about to be attacked by Indians. He offers to save them if virtuous Jane Novak will come away with him. To save the others, she agrees.... And then saves Hart.

I have seen half a dozen Hart movies in the last couple of months, several of them from 1918 and they have mostly been about the Bad Man who finds his Christian redemption because of a good woman. He was cranking them out in 1918, ten features in total, and their quality varies from the great to the ludicrous. This one is somewhere in the middle, with a cogent story and good acting by all hands, although the audience at the Museum of Modern Art thought the religious component worthy of tittering at...at first.

One thing that seems lacking for most of the story is great camera-work. Joe August did great work for Hart and others over the next thirty years. Yet he seems to have run out of interesting ways to shoot the wilderness, although he does show the attacking Indians riding along the top of the ridge line. That would be a standard John Ford shot. It's very dramatic, although as Howard Hawks remarked when he was shooting his Ford-like RED RIVER, it's a stupid way to behave.

My misgivings were cleared up in the final sequence: night shots with a lot of back and side lighting to bring out the shapes of faces and the emotional impact. Frankly, it saves the movie. Although, had I not seen all those other standard Hart westerns in short order, I might rate it higher yet.