Thursday, July 21, 2022

The silent westerns of director Jean Durand – “A Hundred Dollars Dead or Alive”

 








Cent dollars mort ou vif – French title

[A $100.00 Dead or Alive – English translated title]

 

A 1911 French film production [Gaumont (Paris)]

Producer:

Director: Jean Durand

Story: Jean Durand

Screenplay: Jean Durand

Cinematography: [black & white]

Running time: 13 minutes

 

Cast:

Joe - Joë Hamman (Jean Hamman)

Daisy Davidson - Berthe Dagmar (Albertine Hamon)

With: Bredow, Gaston Modot, Max Dhartigny, Ernest Bourbon

 

Location: Camargue, Bouches-du-Rhône, France

“This is the first of the Gaumont westerns in which Hamman plays a bad man who, unlike Broncho Billy, cannot be redeemed. The centerpiece of the film puts Hamman’s stunt work on display in and around the train – and has no intertitles to distract from the action. In one shot, he rides up to the train rounding a bend toward the camera, dismounts his horse, and runs and grabs onto a handrail – and his shirt looms into CU (in the left foreground) as the train passes. After shooting several of the posse, from the last train car, he crawls (in MCU) onto the last car’s roof and crawls off over the other cars to reach the speeding locomotive. An unusual shot looking straight down at the chains and bars linking the still-moving locomotive and first train car shows him desperately, and finally successfully, trying to uncouple one from the other. Hamman would return to this stunt work, with variations, in “Le railway de la mort, released four months later.” - Richard Abel


Entire film link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpGIIbRrWkg

 


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