Two 1916 films by Allan Dwan: The Half-Breed; The Good Bad Man

Turner Classic Movies does a truly wonderful job of showing movies from all periods, uninterrupted and in the correct aspect ratio.  My only (slight) quibble is that they do not show enough films from the silent era, in some ways the artistic apex of film.  Unfortunately only about 35% of the 10,000 films made between 1912 and 1929 survive in any form at all and only about 11% in their original 35 mm. format. Among many problems in showing these films is the projection speed (in the silent era this was variable but now silent films are usually projected at a standard 16 frames per second) and the quality of the surviving prints, especially since only MoMA has a variance from the fire department to show original nitrate prints, which are gorgeous.  But at least Turner does show some silent films, including most recently films of Douglas Fairbanks.

I am not a big fan of the grinning, jumping Fairbanks of his films in the twenties, but these two Allan Dwan films, The Half-Breed and The Good Bad Man, have a much more subdued and intense Fairbanks.  These films were both made by Dwan for D.W. Griffith's company and Dwan learned a great deal from the man who, at that time, was making Intolerance:  the importance of "the wind in the trees" and the importance of low-key acting, the ability of the camera to show emotion. Dwan went on to make films until 1961 but even in these early efforts he shows an ability to use locations and to direct actors.  The Half-Breed, based on a Bret Harte story, takes place largely in a forest,, while much of The Good Bad Man (a term often applied to the persona of William S. Hart, a star of silent Westerns) takes place in the desert.  The desert and the forest are places where the Fairbanks characters feel most comfortable and they are contrasted with the evils of so-called "civilization."  Both films have Fairbanks looking for his lost father:  in The Half-Breed his white father abandoned his Indian mother (who committed suicide) and in The Good Bad Man his father was murdered before Passin' Through, the Fairbanks character, was born. Themes of nature and paternity continued to fascinate Dwan throughout his career.

For an excellent discussion and history of these two films I highly recommend Frederic Lombardi's Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios (McFarland and Company, Inc., 2013), with its impressive amount of detail about Dwan's career.