Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Straight Shooting (1917)

This western feature film, the first directed by John Ford, stars Harry Carey and Molly Malone, with Duke R. Lee, George Berrell, Ted Brooks, Milt Brown, Hoot Gibson, Vester Pegg and William Gettinger.

Carey is the stereotypical good bad man caught in the middle of a struggle for land control between farmers and ranchers, and his own struggle to become a good man.

The standoff between Carey and Pegg is suprisingly modern-looking in Ford’s choice of framing and camera placement that eschews right angles. Also of note is Ford’s rare use of closeups to express tension between characters. Ford’s direction is confident even though he was only 23 years old at the time.

You have to love the sheriff’s black shirt with the stark white piping!

— Carl Bennett

This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from the excellent 4K restoration of the film supervised by Universal Pictures. Restoration utilized a 35mm safety fine-grain print from the Library of Congress and a 35mm print from the Museum of Modern Art. Image stabilization has been performed and the intertitles have been cleaned. Dust, speckling and minor print flaws have been allowed to remain in the moving images. Overall, the viewing experience is excellent.

The film is accompanied by a piano and acoustic guitar music score by Michael Gatt.

Supplementary material includes an excellent audio commentary by film historian and Ford biographer Joseph McBride; “Bull Scores a Touchdown,” a video essay by film critic and Ford biographer Tag Gallagher; a short fragment of the lost Ford film Hitchin’ Posts (1920) preserved by the Library of Congress; and a 12-page insert booklet with an essay by Tag Gallagher.

This is our recommended home video edition of the film for North American collectors.

USA: Click logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by a piano and acoustic guitar music score by Michael Gatt.

Supplementary material includes audio commentary by film historian and Ford biographer Joseph McBride; a 1970 audio interview with John Ford by Joseph McBride; video essays “Bull Scores a Touchdown” and “A Horse or a Mary?” by film critic and Ford biographer Tag Gallagher; a video interview with film historian and Kim Newman; a short fragment of the lost Ford film Hitchin’ Posts (1920) preserved by the Library of Congress; an insert booklet featuring writings by Richard Combs, Phil Hoad and Tag Gallagher; plus a limited edition O-card slipcase and reversible slipcase artwork.

This is our recommended home video edition of the film for European collectors.

United Kingdom: Click logomark to purchase this Region B Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Purchase supports Silent Era.

This Region 1 DVD edition has been mastered from the excellent 4K restoration of the film supervised by Universal Pictures. Restoration utilized a 35mm safety fine-grain print from the Library of Congress and a 35mm print from the Museum of Modern Art. Image stabilization has been performed and the intertitles have been cleaned. Dust, speckling and minor print flaws have been allowed to remain in the moving images. Overall, the viewing experience is excellent.

The film is accompanied by a piano and acoustic guitar music score by Michael Gatt.

Supplementary material includes an excellent audio commentary by film historian and Ford biographer Joseph McBride; “Bull Scores a Touchdown,” a video essay by film critic and Ford biographer Tag Gallagher; and a short fragment of the lost Ford film Hitchin’ Posts (1920) preserved by the Library of Congress.

This is our recommended DVD home video edition of the film for North American collectors.

USA: Click logomark to purchase this Region 1 DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click logomark to purchase this Region 1 DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a VHS videotape copy of a very-good 8mm reduction print, which has been transferred at a faster than natural pace speed and is missing footage. It should be no surprise that many of the highlights are blasted out to white, and that shadows are featureless. The source print has the usual amount of dust, speckling, schmutz and scratches. Framing is tight, with some intertitles cut-off at the sides. A rather horrid-looking disc on a large high-definition monitor. For us, the disc looks best played on a computer in a small window with the software allowing us to slow playback to about 85 percent of the transfer speed.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting low-fidelity orchestral recordings.

Supplemental material includes Tom Mix in Roping a Bride (1915), from a good 8mm reduction print, and Pete Morrison in The Four-Gun Bandit (1919), from a very-good 8mm reduction print.

Not at all a great edition and not recommended.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

It is unknown whether a soundtrack accompanies the film.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other WESTERN FILMS of the silent era available on home video.