This unreleased John Ford Western, lost for 106 years, has been found!

If John Ford’s filmography includes well-known classics such as Prisoner of the Desert, Fantastic Ride, The Grapes of Wrath or How Green Was My Field, the director has a whole part of his career that is much less well-known, filmed in silence and found in one of his lost films.

Found in Chile

There are nearly 60 films, shorts, mediums or features that the director signed on to – at the time under the name Jack Ford – and some of them are major films like The Iron Horse or The Three Noble Bastards that inspired The Hidden. The castle that inspired Star Wars! And in fact, it’s one of those silent films that has been rediscovered Warehouse in Chile.

A day before the demolition of this warehouse in Santiago, the owner found films belonging to a local collector that had remained there for 40 years after his death. An expert has come to examine Ford’s film, The Scarlet Drop, in excellent condition for a film that was obviously widely screened and dated 1918! Only 30 minutes of the film still exist, but it has never been discovered in its entirety, which will become possible after its restoration.

A western about redemption

This medium-length film titled The Scarlet Drop (La Tâche de Sang in French) is one of 26 silent westerns made by the director starring actor Harry Carrey, whose son, Harry Carrey Jr., would appear in several Ford films, notably The Son of the. desert. Over the years, several other Ford silent films starring Carrey Sr. have been found, including Le Ranch Diavolo (in Czechoslovakia) and Bucking Broadway (in France).

The Scarlet Drop takes place during the Civil War. Kaintuck Ridge refuses to enlist in the Union militia and enlists as a marauder. At the end of the conflict, he will be considered an outlaw, but will have a golden opportunity to redeem himself.

Ford made his first film with synchronized sound in 1927’s Mom of My Heart, starring the childhood director Robert Parrish (The Undaunted), but it was Napoleon’s Barber (1928) that made his first. He speaks the truth, and with Victor Maclagen’s The Black Guard (1929), he succeeds in his first speech.