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A Mightier Hand
(1910) United States of America
B&W : One reel / 975 feet
Directed by (unknown)
Cast: (unknown)
Powers Picture Plays production; distributed by Motion Picture Distributing & Sales Company. / Released 12 July 1910. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format. / Silent film.
Drama: Western.
Synopsis: [The Moving Picture World, 9 July 1910, page ?] John Holmer and William Carter, two western farmers, have a quarrel over the boundary line of their adjoining farms. Holmer is shot in a fight with Carter, who is arrested and taken away by the sheriff. In a powerful dramatic scene, Holmer’s widow curses Carter and swears to avenge her husband. By an ingenious trick Carter escapes from the sheriff and runs away, taking with him his little son Frank. Fourteen years pass. Carter has made a fortune in the east under an assumed name. His son Frank, now a fine young man, goes west with a party of friends. While riding horseback, he passes the cottage of the widow Holmer and meets her beautiful daughter May. Frank is thrown from his horse and the girl picks him up and takes him into her home. The girl’s mother enters, and, horrified by the resemblance of the young man to the man whom she believed murdered her husband, orders him from her home. But the young people have fallen in love with each other. They meet, and after a few days elope and go east. The girl sends a group photograph of herself, her husband and her father-in-law to her mother. The mother recognizes Carter’s face, despite his gray hair, and, seizing a revolver, she leaves her home to carry out her oath of vengeance. The widow enters Carter’s home and confronts him with a pistol, exclaiming, ‘At last! I have you, and I shall kill you as you killed my husband.’ But before she can raise the pistol to shoot, Carter utters a fearful cry, and falls dead of heart disease. The son and daughter enter, and a most pathetic scene closes the story.
Reviews: [The Moving Picture World, 23 July 1910, page ?] Often the writer of these criticisms has called attention to the undesirability of making films of this character. Sometimes murders are necessary to the artistic development of a plot, but the carrying out of a definitely announced purpose to kill is scarcely the correct thing to show in a picture supposed to amuse or instruct. That a convenient attack of heart failure prevents the half-crazed woman from fulfilling her threat does not alter the real situation. The man falls dead at her feet, the result of fright at her appearance and declared intention to shoot him. The last scene over the man’s dead body is pathetic, and forms a rather disagreeable background for the young people to utilize as their start in life. The chance meeting of the young people, the elopement, and other features are interesting, but reconciliation rather than virtual murder would be quite as impressive and would leave a better feeling. It is quite likely that the idea of just retribution was in the producer’s mind, but it results in such a gruesome ending that it should either be changed or the film withdrawn. The quality of the Powers pictures is so uniformly good that it seems all the more regrettable that the output is marred by this mistake.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 7 August 2023.
References: Sklar-Movie p. 15 : Website-AFI.
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