CommentsXp Best movie ever!
Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.
AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Edgar Allan Pooh . . . is to History what Today's Fox "News" is to Truth: A Bald-faced Lie! IRON HORSE comes from vastly over-rated director Jack Ford, a Confederate Red Commie Nazi sympathizer who won a record number of "Best Director" Golden Doodads simply because the Elections always have been rigged by the Billionaire Hollywood Plutocrats (which also is why Disney and MGM cleaned up on "Best Animated Shorts" Gelded Statuettes year-after-year during the Golden Age of Looney Tunes). IRON HORSE's "hero" Dave Brandon rides for the Pony Express nearly a decade after its historical demise, Bozo Ford moves the Union Pacific Railhead West, then East Willy-Nilly (with a random bride and groom achieving 21st Century Japanese Bullet Train Speeds by tooling along on the crooked 1868 rails from North Platte to Cheyenne in less than "10 hours"!), and Ford-the-Clown fabricates a Great Cheyenne Two-Fingered War Chief whose day job is spending 99% of his time being an actual WHITE MAN holding a land monopoly on the Sacred Black Hills Burial Grounds of the Sioux Tribe! This entirely Racist depiction of self-deprecating Asian and militarily idiotic Native Americans, along with MGM's GONE WITH THE WIND and hundreds of other Ford, Fox, and MGM Crimes against the Truth perpetuated "Jim Crow" Racism another 50 years in the Deplorable U.S. Red States, resulting in Hate Crimes, Dylan Roof-style Lynchings, and despicable Tweets from Game-Show-Host-in-Chief Rump even to this day!
joan_freyer I just got to see this and it is a great movie! Classic John Ford! I won't repeat what the other reviews say but rather add some things not pointed out by others: The barroom fight scene is amazing. The crowd hold up lanterns to illuminate the brawl and this creates an amazing effect. The crowd surround the two men fighting so you can't see much of the fight which adds to the realism. Only a very confident director would 'hide' a vicious fist fight inside a crowd scene. The effect makes the fight appear to be viciously real. The voice over implied that Ford goaded George O'Brien, a real life navy boxer, into really fighting the double for the villain ( the double is never shown face front in the fight).The final fight scene and shoot out is also very impressive in it's realism. Ford adds nice touches like the wounded man smoking calmly during the fight and one of the Indians falling to his death with his dog coming up to sit by his dead Indian master. Ford's ability to add tiny details adds to every scene.Most of the scenes are shot in snow and one blizzard and you can often see the breath of the actors in a scene. It must have been very cold but the effects build up and add to the realism that this was filmed in the winter and not the summer.This is a great film and shows John Ford already a master of his game. Everyone should see it and not be freaked out that it is a silent. The music is fantastic and you forget it is a silent. In a silent the visuals rule rather than words anyway and Ford would tear pages of script away. He did not need words.J E F
Neil Doyle THE IRON HORSE is a plot heavy western with what appears to be an authentic historical background, well photographed in crisp B&W photography that is not as primitive as one might expect from a film made in 1924. It bustles with excitement whenever any action scenes are taking place, accompanied by a "silent" music score that actually fits the story and never becomes tiresome.GEORGE O'BRIEN has the lead but doesn't enter the film until at least fifty minutes is taken up with a prologue involving old Abe Lincoln himself and the friendship of two children who are soon separated but destined to meet again midway through the story when they're adults. The girl is played as a young woman by MADGE BELLAMY. She and O'Brien become romantically attached although she's now the fiancé of one of the villains of the piece. There's also a subplot involving the man who killed O'Brien's father, Bauman (FRED KOHLER), who is a white man joining the Indians for attacks on the "iron horse".Some of the acting is strictly silent film technique and there's the usual John Ford inclusion of comedy relief from actors like J. FARRELL MacDONALD, long stretches of captioned "talk" for scenes that run too long with exposition, but decent work from O'Brien and Bellamy as the leads.It's pioneering in the Ford mold, obviously a film that employed a huge cast to portray the building of the Union Pacific railway to the west, telling a fictional story of romance and danger with authority.Worth viewing, although at two hours and ten minutes it can sometimes try your patience. All the hard work that went into the making of the film is evident throughout.
Teebs2 Very early John Ford western, don't bother looking for John Wayne here! "The Iron Horse" tells the story of the building of the railroad across America from the East to West coasts. Of course this is a movie so we also get a romance plot, a vengeance plot, hostile Indians, corrupt officials, jovial Irishmen, nasty Indians and so forth.Although the tone of the film is mostly pretty patriotic and upbeat, there are several darker moments that hint at the corruption and greed in business as landowners attempt to influence the route of the railroad with bribes of women and money. Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" amongst many other later Westerns takes this theme further. Much of the work is done by Chinese immigrants, but they all seem pretty cheerful here!In many areas the film is inevitably dated, particularly it's comic scenes and the aforementioned treatment of racial stereotypes. There are a few landscape shots and action scenes, but none as stunning or exciting as in Ford's slightly later "Stagecoach". The 2 hour plus running time is also a little too much. However, the film does succeed in creating an overwhelming sense of achievement in the creation of the railroad, although the sense that 'Civilisation' may actually be a threat, developed in later Westerns, is already apparent with the saloon that doubles as a court of law, and a drunken judge.
