3 Bad Men

Not one of Ford's better oaters, "3 Bad Men" is nonetheless a modest and satisfactory silent Western, with comic touches and serviceable storyline of three outlaws rescuing a young abandoned girl after her mother is killed in the wild west. While the able players (George O'Brien, Tom Santischi, Olive Borden, Priscilla Bonner, J. Farrel MacDonald) are in good form, the film is chiefly notable for its superlatively evocative photography, the shots of gorgeous exteriors and the typically Fordian long shot of epic landscape & riders on the horizon. It is very poetic and well-made. Look for that exciting sequence of the Dakota land rush.

I stumbled upon this on the Fox Movie channel. it is an excellent tale of the West as only John Ford can tell it. great cinematography, narrative, acting. the camera-work is especially compelling. and the updated music by Dana Kaproff is outstanding. some of the best silent film music I've ever heard, and I write film scores, so I know what I'm talking about. check out the Fox Movie channel if your cable company offers it. They show great films from their library. this is a must see and must have for anyone's collection of silent masterpieces!

This film convinces me that John Ford deserves his legendary status. He seems to have had his unique gift for cinema story telling from his beginnings. This is a starkly realistic tale depicting , unromantically , some of the brutal hardship of the late 19th century west. There is great poignancy in the loyalty and ethos which surface in even the most "bad" of men. To convey this in a silent film , with fairly minimal use of dialogue screens , required some pretty good acting and good camera work. There are several protracted facial studies which convey the critical messages very eloquently. Through most of the film I forgot that there was no "talking" dialogue. There are some surprisingly "contemporary" humor lines on the dialogue screens , not typical of westerns but quite typical of Fords evolving love of pathos.

3 Bad Men (as the title card shows it) is an outstanding example of the silent western and one of John Ford's earliest triumphs. The photography is stunning and the land rush sequences truly impressive, and while the story of redemption and sacrifice is predictable it is nonetheless still moving.