Pendaison à Jefferson City - French title
Hanging at Jefferson City - English title
A 1911 French production [Gaumont (Paris)]
Producer: Jean Durand
Director: Jean Durand
Story: Joë Hamman (Jean Hammon)
Screenplay: Joë Hamman (Jean Hammon)
Cinematography: [black & white]
Running time: 7 minutes
Cast:
Joe - Joë Hamman (Jean Hammon),
Saloon owner - Berthe Dagmar (Albertine-Marie Dagmar)
Raymond Aimos (Raymond Caudrilliers), Gaston Modot, Edouard
Grisollet, Mégé Cadet Lucien Bataille, Carlos Avril, Vesta Harold Gustave
Hamilton
Filming locations: Camargue, Bouches-du-Rhône, France (exterior scenes)
“This is a rather elliptical story of three miners, one of whom is
accused falsely of killing one of his friends and can only be saved from
hanging by the other friend. The mine owner entrusts Bill with a payroll bag
that he is to deliver to a distant post (why is unclear), and he asks Burton to
accompany him (which the owner overhears). After Burton goes off with Joë
instead (why and where is unclear), Bill slips and falls into a deep pool of
water and drowns. Rumors begin to circulate in the saloon that Burton is
guilty, and, just before being arrested, he desperately asks the female saloon
owner to find Joë, who alone can exonerate him (where he has gone also is
unclear). In a series of skillful horseback rides, she is successful, and Joë
rides up to the scene of the hanging in time to save his friend.
The film is notable for several deep-space exterior shots, and especially for Dagmar and Hamman’s horseback riding. One scene relatively smoothly tracks her horse through a dry gulch, over a narrow bridge (in a low-angle shot), and from the bridge up a steep hillside (in a corresponding high-angle shot). The next depicts Hamman’s ride, capped by an expert sideways descent down another steep hillside. In the end, he fires a single revolver shot like the heroine in Selig’s later Sallie’s Sure Shot, (…) which miraculously severs the rope from which his friend is hanging.” - Richard Abel
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