the audience applauded

A Brilliant Conflict

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A familiar title, as it was Gary Cooper's debut, I've always thought it was some sort of drama about settlers in which a fort or township called 'Barbara Worth' (as in 'Santa Barbara') gets saved at the end.However Barbara Worth turns out to be the name of the heroine, and the plot proves more of a soap opera than an action movie, as Ronald Colman and Gary Cooper vie for her affection. Who cares? Despite their combined star power, Colman has little to do, and Cooper even less. Vilma Banky is charming in the title role, but the personal drama proves remarkably uninteresting. What makes the film live is the superb photography by George Barnes and Gregg Toland - shown off to perfection in the beautiful tinted print available - and the flood created when the Colorado bursts its banks, engineered by special effects veteran Ned Mann, (best-known for his work in Britain for Korda during the 30's), who presumably also created the Dust Devil we see at the start.

A 1926 silent-era western. The Barbara in question is the adopted daughter of a western pioneer. His plan to irrigate his area from the Colorado river is picked up by a New York financier. One of my favorite actors, Ronald Colman is the engineer set to head up the project. He immediately becomes a love interest for Barbara. His main romantic adversary though, is Gary Cooper; a local hometown boy with unresolved feelings for the lady.Everyone, however, is faced with a bigger problem. The corporate financier is playing hardball and cutting financial ties with the settlers. While I've always loved Colman, and always hated Cooper; that becomes less relevant being that this is a silent film. Acting is not the biggest conveyor in the storytelling. The film here was remarkably well-preserved; some of it shot in Nevada locations. Not a genre I will be investigating fully, but a fun one-off nonetheless.

Gary Cooper was one of the most consistently popular stars of classic cinema from the beginning of the talkie era to his death in 1961. However there is a lesser-known early chapter to his career, when he played supporting roles in a series of silent pictures. He never achieved stardom in this period, in part because a lot of his appeal was founded in his warm, steady voice. Still, his charming persona was enough to shine through even in these non-speaking days, as this, his first credited appearance, shows.The Winning of Barbara Worth was a prestigious picture in its day, directed by the respected and capable Henry King. King was really good at these human dramas played out against a grand backdrop. On the one hand he keeps the vastness and deadly potential of the desert a continual presence, with landscape shots that seem to go on forever. But on the other hand he is not averse to stripping away all other business to just focus us on people and their faces. There are some really neat close-ups here, such as Gary Cooper jealously spying on Vilma Banky with Ronald Colman, or Banky as she walks out on Colman. These shots aren't overused, and they seem to segue naturally into the editing pattern rather than being "look-at-this" attention-grabbers. But what is really impressive is the way King can arrange things to tell the big story and the intimate one simultaneously. Look at the scene in which the water flows into the irrigation system. The crowd cheer and dance ecstatically, but the main characters who have put more into this than any other are stood still, as if overcome with emotion. There are a handful of close-ups of various reactions, and then we see Banky and Colman share their first kiss, and all the liveliness behind them reflects the intensity of the moment. As the kiss breaks off there is a sudden feeling of awkwardness between them, and the slowing of the crowd seems to mimic this too.And this is very much a *silent* drama of reactions, expressions, motions and body language. Gary Cooper may not have his voice here but he does have that deep, sensitive face and steady, deliberate way of moving. His acting is only passable at this stage, but he has the look of a man one can implicitly trust, and this goes a long way in screen stardom. And yet for this picture Cooper is ostensibly the third wheel, behind dapper, moustachioed lead man Ronald Colman. Colman was a very decent dramatic player, and as with Cooper there was something innately likable about his manner which secured his success into the sound era. Colman is very good here, and it is only his experience as an actor coupled with his own honesty and simplicity that prevent him being outshone by Cooper. The leading lady is Vilma Banky, who shot to fame as the object of ravishment for Rudolph Valentino. In this slightly more grown-up picture she reveals herself to be a very fine actress, and like her two male co-stars she has a capacity for deeply expressive reacting. Sadly her career was to fizzle out in the sound era, probably because English was not her first language.Story-wise, The Winning of Barbara Worth is a tale of progress and prosperity that is very typical of Roaring Twenties optimism. And perhaps herein lies another reason why Cooper didn't become a cinematic icon until a few years later. The end of the silent era happened to coincide with the beginning of the great depression. Before that, Cooper's down-to-earth nature didn't really fit with the grandiose flights of fancy that made up most of 1920s cinema. However by the 1930s, cinema had suddenly become very different in its scope and focus. Heroes became ordinary men who worked for a living, and the heroin really would marry the boy next door. As it is, this picture sees Cooper as the homely type whom Banky loves as a brother. There's no real problem with this – Cooper isn't miscast, he's simply in the wrong time for lead roles – and he plays his part aptly in what is a very worthy 20s drama.

There is no mention of the source of the music, but Gaylord Carter played his improvised score for a special showing of The Winning of Barbara Worth on January 28, 1971, and it's a recording of that performance which turned up on the DVD. The instrument was a 36-rank Wurlitzer Pipe Organ. Henry King and Frances Goldwyn were in the audience and both spoke after the film. I was there. Mr. King described his search for a desert that looked like a desert, after finding the Mojave in bloom. He also recalled hearing Gaylord Carter play the organ at the Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles in the 1920's, soon after Harold Lloyd recommended Gaylord for the job.