Synopsis
Buckskin Hamilton guides a wagon train across the wasteland, caring well for the pioneers he escorts, but hoping to solve the murder of his brother by one of the travellers.
Wagon Tracks
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Alternative Titles
Der Siedlertreck, 车轨
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Theatrical
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USA
Releases by Country
USA
28 Jul 1919
- Theatrical
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A great William S. Hart western, handsomely co-produced with Thomas Ince. Hart leads a wagon train, falls for Jane Novak, and seeks justice for the death of his brother. Although the film's representation of Indigenous peoples strikes me as fairly sympathetic – the threat they pose is explicitly presented as justified compensation for a white man's act of murder – that story arc still harmfully reduces Indigenous peoples to fearsome, one-note threats to white life. Hart's wagon master character, "the Empire Builder," is plainly positioned as a model serviceman of American settler colonialism. I nonetheless found a great deal to appreciate: top-tier production values, moving acting, and heart-tugging interpersonal stories of love and family. The use of lighting is a particular standout, aided by fine tinting and well-illustrated intertitles. Other pleasures: pretending you're Novak pleading for mercy upon William S. Hunk's chest.
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Wagon Tracks is a Western film written by C. Gardner Sullivan and directed by Lambert Hillyer.
Set in 1850 during the gold rush, Buckskin Hamilton is a desert guide in the mold of Kit Carson. Buckskin travels to Westport Landing to meet a St. Louis steamer. The group aboard the steamboat includes Buckskin's younger brother, Billy Hamilton, who recently graduated from medical school thanks to Buckskin's sacrifices.
While on the steamboat, Billy Hamilton catches corrupt gambler David Washburn cheating at the cards, which results in a fight and Washburn's sister Jane walks in and is involved in a fight over the gun. The gun is fired and Billy Hamilton dies. Buckskin arrives and finds his brother dead. Although he swears…
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J'aime bien que le film ait un intertitre style "VOICI LA MASCULINITÉ INCARNÉE!" juste pour montrer un grand mou coiffé d'un peau de rat en train de donner de l'eau à des chiens-chiens heureux mais c'est à peu près tout. Pourquoi ça a un Blu-ray et pas Hell's Hinges, qui est le western fun avec William S. Hart ?
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Got to admit that Hart's performance here just absolutely destroyed me. It might be the best western performance I've seen. Certainly the most sensitive and affecting. The character itself is essentially a primitive version of those Randolph Scott heroes though without the externally feminine removed. This makes the first act of the film amazing. In fact I would love some melodramatic filmmaker tackle this first act verbatim and then run it some other direction than the movie takes (the best I can think of is the deceased Nic Ray). The next fifty minutes don't take the film in its most interesting possible direction, but it is an interesting direction all the same.
And hey future big time director Lloyd Bacon plays the villain's second banana which is a cool piece of trivia.
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The landscape of the American West not just as reflection or mould of the characters that inhabit it, but as interrogator.
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"Understanding for the first time what true manhood means."
And then it just cuts to a man giving dogs some water.
Not wrong, honestly.
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This never quite reaches the heights of Hell's Hinges (but what does?) but is extremely worth watching all the same. The three years make a remarkable difference in a number of ways- the acting is subtler, with somewhat less archetypal characters, the filmstock seems more sensitive, and the outdoor photography is much crisper and clearer in general- though this, too, relies a lot on tinting, to good effect. I've never really seen the virtue of tinting before, but damned if this project isn't selling me on it- one of the best effects in the movie, a mirage of a water hole, is achieved by superimposing a blue tinted scene of water over the orange tinted desert, and it comes across…
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Sand-rimmed sepia frames turn the pioneer trails into the charred earth of one man's tortured soul, a manifest destiny less about wagons west than tracking down the man responsible for his brother's death in the land left behind.
No Indian characters are harmed in this picture, probably because Buckskin Hamilton's (William S. Hart) bloodlust is reserved solely for just one person, and though the silent movie intertitles insist on telling a story of mid 19th-century American nationalism, Hart's eyes indicate that this is clearly a revenger's tale.
Unfortunately, the landscape of Hart's face is not nearly as interesting as what's traversed between Kanas City and New Mexico, stiffly alternating between forlorn bereavement and twitchy-eyed retribution, the piano score doing a…
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The simple structure of a William S. Hart film continues to be a satisfying delight. Direct but still emotionally complex, the familiar themes Hart plays within retain enough variance to remain always interesting, even as a clear formula notably develops. I suppose that’s partially the nature of the genre itself: the push and pull of Western movie tropes fighting both for recognition and revision in the pantheon of its mythmaking. Wagon Tracks plays into the nobility of the Western hero rather than the duplicity of his nature, casting Hart as wholesome man whose violence only manifests on behalf of a righteous vengeance. His stoic nuance once again demonstrates an unexpected flexibility, capturing a sense of altruism and sadness otherwise unknown…