User Reviews

Hart was out of his element in this film, but the main plot theme was still there - redemption through mother love. Instead of the barren West it was set in the harsh lumberjack country of the North Woods. Maude George was an intriguing actress, who was used by Erich Von Stroheim in a few of his films. Usually cast by him as erotic and exotic countesses, she was quite memorable in "The Wedding March" as Nicki's cigar puffing mother, Princess Wildeliebe Rauffenburg. Before she became mysterious, she appeared in Westerns and in "Blue Blazes Rawden she had an unusual part as the leading lady.

With titles such as "God's vast cathedral" and "Man - the despoiler" they displayed Hart's background as a legitimate, melodramatic stage actor. Hart stars as "Blue Blazes" Rawden, head of a team of lumber- jacks, described as "Hell's Babies". They are headed to Timber Cove were they are instructed by Rawden to tear up the town. "Ladyfingers" Hilgard (Robert McKim, a Hart film regular), a renegade Englishman who owns the Far North Saloon and is also a crook, receives a letter from his mother. She believes he has made good and is coming for a visit.

After a brawl with Joe La Barge (Jackie Hoxie), "Blue Blazes" and Hilgard fight over the possession of Babette (Maude George, in the sort of grimacing performance that a lot of people associate with silent screen acting) a "half breed" of French and Indian blood, and the saloon (that Rawden has taken a liking to). Rawden wins (even though Hilgard has taken the bullets from his gun) but before he dies, Hilgard shows him his mother's letter and asks Rawden to make it right with her.

When his mother arrives, she is inconsolable but her kindness and trust reform "Blue Blazes" who takes her to Hilgard's grave. Rawden lies to her and Eric (Robert Gordon) - he tells them that Hilgard was honoured and respected in the town. Before they reach the grave, he has had a new headstone erected that reads "A Good Man Died" - Rawden is overcome with emotion and resolves to be a better man even if it means leaving the town and his friends. Babette calls on the mother, intending to tell her the truth but before she gets the chance the elderly lady treats her with such kindness and gives her many compliments. Babette ends up confiding in Eric, who in a panic and goaded by Babette, shoots Rawden. After stopping the town from lynching Eric, "Blue Blazes", who is mortally wounded, decides to take the "long trail" - alone.

Jack Hoxie was a minor Western actor, who, in 1921, was lured away by Universal and put into more prestigious films. The critics of the time always praised Hart and this film was no exception. "Wids" proclaimed that Hart, as a director, could be taught nothing about making great films and that the beautiful scenery made you feel that you could smell the "perfume of the balsams and evergreen". "Moving Picture World" said that Hart tackled the different setting with much skill.

Recommended.

William S. Hart plays his usual good bad-man here, but the setting and impetus for regeneration have changed. Rather than a bandit in the open West and frontier village, he's a lumberjack of the forest, who gains a tavern by killing the former owner. His reform comes not with the love of a young pure woman, but with the mother of the man he killed. Hart's reform was usually implied to be religious, if not obvious, such as in "Hell's Hinges" (1916). Here, one probably wouldn't think religion has anything to do with it, except that there's a cross in the intertitles.

The story is mostly setup and played out in the tavern of Timber Cove. This wasn't uncommon for Hart's films; nearly half of "On the Night Stage" (1915) took place within a saloon. There's some low-key lighting and two fights within the tavern in "Blue Blazes Rawden". The film, however, is a lethargic (for a Hart vehicle, at least) melodrama. It's silly, or rather ridiculous, and contrived in parts. The half-breed French squaw Babette directs much of the soap opera, indirectly causing one man's death and nearly the death of two others. This is certainly not Hart's best work--see "Hell's Hinges", "The Narrow Trail" (1917), or "Wagon Tracks" (1919) for that.

(Note: The video I saw was of poor quality.)

By the spring of 1915, Hart had made some 20 two-reel pictures for producer Thomas Ince, averaging two every month. Keno Bates, Liar (1915; also known as The Last Card) tells a story Hart would largely repeat a few years later in "Blue Blazes" Rawden (1918). As I outline in my biography of Ince, these two films reveal that the difference between a Hart two-reel short such as this one, the last of the series, and a feature was not in the fundamental narrative, but how it was treated. The feature has more details and a slower pace, while the short relies on greater density in its unfolding events.

In "Blue Blazes" Rawden, Hart plays the title role, the leader of "virile, grim men of strong pleasures and strong vices" who are the despoilers of the huge trees of the forest primeval. The nearest settlement is full of "the devil's lures," and here a "half-breed" "squaw," Babette, becomes attracted to Rawden. A fight ensues and Rawden kills her companion, Hilgard.

However, his emotions change when he learns Hilgard's mother was coming to visit. He realizes the purity of a mother's love. Rawden ensures that she hears nothing but good of her son, selling Hilgard's saloon to benefit her. Ultimately Rawden himself, although earning Babette's love, is touched more by the idyllic mother, believing God has been revealed to him.