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Clip description
Darley (Frank Harvey) has just shot dead Charles Blake (Campbell Copelin), in Jim Thornton’s cabin. Blake had made Claire Darley pregnant, then refused to marry her. Thornton (Frank Leighton) and Joan Burbridge (Shirley Ann Richards) rush to the log cabin to try to stop him, but Darley blows the charges, setting off the chain reaction of falling trees. The trees have been pre-cut, making the forest extremely dangerous. In the ensuing destruction, the wounded Darley is killed by a falling tree, but Jim and his new love Joan survive.
Curator’s notes
The use of sound is very effective in this sequence. The fake forest looks very obvious to modern eyes, but the sound makes it much more credible. One of the film’s stranger implications is that Jim Thornton has, in fact, fallen in love with his own sister. The script steers around this ticklish quandary by making Joan the adopted daughter of Stephen Burbridge. They are free to marry, which they do in the film’s final scene.
