The Winning of Barbara Worth

The Winning of Barbara Worth with Vilma Banky and Gary Cooper.

Erämaan paratiisi / Stormens dotter / Fiore del deserto.
    Director: Henry King. Year: 1926. Country: USA. Sog.: dal romanzo omonimo (1911) di Harold Bell Wright. Scen.: Frances Marion, Rupert Hughes. F.: George Barnes, Gregg Toland (assistente). M.: Viola Lawrence. Scgf.: Carl Oscar Borg.
    Int.: Ronald Colman (William Holmes), Vilma Bánky (Barbara Worth), Gary Cooper (Abe Lee), Charles Lane (Jefferson Worth), Paul McAllister (l’indovino), E. J. Ratcliffe (James Greenfield), Clyde Cook (Tex), Jack Montgomery (il padre di Baby Peggy).
    Prod.: Samuel Goldwyn, Inc. 35 mm. D.: 95’. Bn.
    Helsinki premiere: 5 Sep 1927 Kino-Palatsi, distributed by UA United Artists Pictures.
    Copy from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
    By courtesy of Park Circus and The Library Trust of the Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Family Trust.
    Soul and Craft: A Portrait of Henry King.
    Introduce Kevin Brownlow.
    Digital piano: Stephen Horne.
    Viewed at Cinema Jolly, Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, with e-subtitles in Italian and English by Sub-Ti Londra, 24 June 2019.

Kevin Brownlow (Il Cinema Ritrovato): "The documentary reconstruction of The Winning of Barbara Worth is of such a high standard that it places the film on a level with the other silent western epics, The Covered Wagon (1923) and The Iron Horse (1924). But whereas those films were set in the 19th century, this is an epic of 20th-century pioneering. How startling to see buckboards and prairie schooners sweeping through the desert, leaving in their wake an immobilised Model T Ford!"

"The film is frank about such modern miracles as the irrigation of Imperial Valley; financiers were promised such a staggering return on their investment that gangsters were used to keep the workforce under control. The picture climaxes with a catastrophic flood – when the Colorado River burst its banks, flooded the valley and created the Salton Sea. Ned Mann’s special effects (mostly miniatures) are exceptional and the sequence has a terrifying reality. Henry King and location manager Ray Moore found the ideal locations in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. Art director Carl Oscar Borg drew up plans for the three towns that had to be built in the desert, and the Western Pacific Railroad built a spur line to the new city of Barbara Worth, Nevada (Barba in the film) – based on El Centro, California. A vast tent city housed the extras, and a mess hall, bakery and recreation centre were built. Once the well had been drilled, hot water rose from 185ft beneath the desert and fed the showerbath system. Yet Henry King felt that the company underwent greater hardship than the people who had settled Imperial Valley. The fierce temperature changes – from 120 degrees during the day to freezing at night – were accompanied by baby tornadoes. One of these destroyed most of the motion-picture town of Kingston, doing $10,000 worth of damage. Whether you like westerns or not, The Winning of Barbara Worth is essential viewing." Kevin Brownlow

AA: Revisited The Winning of Barbara Worth which I had seen before in the silent Henry King retrospective in 1995 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone. On display then was a 16 mm print from Cineteca del Friuli. I had been especially looking forward to this very film, aware of Kevin Brownlow's accounts of it in The War, the West and the Wilderness, for instance.

In Pordenone I observed that Henry King was good only when he had a fine script. Frances Marion was his screenwriter in his silent masterpieces Stella Dallas and The Winning of Barbara Worth; Edmund Goulding wrote Tol'able David. Frances Marion was also a screenwriter in Partners Again, King's entry in the Potash and Perlmutter franchise, and Sonny, one of the Richard Barthelmess follow-ups to Tol'able David.

Henry King was already a starmaker. He had discovered Ronald Colman's star quality in The White Sister (1923), and in The Winning of Barbara Worth he gave Gary Cooper his break into stardom. Vilma Banky is very good as the Western woman. Her I know only by three films she made back to back: The Eagle, The Son of the Sheik (these two with Valentino), and The Winning of Barbara Worth. She is elegant, dignified and convincing.

A great epic Western, one of the best silent Westerns, The Winning of Barbara Worth includes elements that seem to prefigure future masterpieces from Red River (the overture in the desert where the baby Barbara is found) to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ronald Colman in the James Stewart role while Gary Cooper plays the part to be acted by John Wayne in John Ford's film).

A special quality of Henry King's is understated dignity, revealed immediately in the desert funeral scene that opens the film. This film begins "at the end of the rainbow".

As for the romantic triangle, King avoids cliché and melodrama. The relationships between the three attractive protagonists are portrayed with tact. Until the end it remains open what the outcome will be.

It's a tale of enterprise, building the future, overcoming adversity. We face tornadoes, sandstorms and a flood of Biblical proportions. This is one of the Westerns which most literally dramatize themes of "garden into the desert", "the trek into the Promised Land" and "building a paradise on Earth".

King relishes epic sequences with caravans of wagon trains, establishing a new town in the middle of nowhere and the building of the giant dam. In humoristic scenes horses are still superior to motor cars. The view of the original accumulation of capital is not idealized. The paradise soon seems to change into a nest of robbers. Ruthless exploitation is revealed.

Another special quality of Henry King's is that during all his career he had an affection with the Spanish and Mexican traditions of America. In this film, Vilma Banky and Gary Cooper's love language is Spanish.

This is also a catastrophe film which like The Towering Inferno and Jaws can be seen as a variation of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. A man-made disaster is imminent because of the unscrupulous neglicence of safety by a financial speculator. In this case it is all about a huge dam to enable a desert irrigation project. The Gary Cooper character is the first "enemy of the people" in Ibsen's ironical sense: he tells the truth and is fired because he is warning people. Soon after, also the Ronald Colman character is fired for the same reason.

The film climaxes with a catastrophe sequence and a ride to the rescue. They are magnificently photographed and thrilling to watch.

It was rewarding to see a good 35 mm print of this masterpiece. We thank the Academy!