Twisted Trails (1916)
*** (out of 4)
Tom Snow (Tom Mix) finds himself on the run after a gang of rustlers frame him for their crime. Sunshine West (Bessie Eyton) finds herself on the run after she thinks she's killed a man who sexually attacked her. The two end up meeting on a lonely trail and decide to head back and prove themselves innocent. TWISTED TRAILS is a pretty adventurous little gem that seems to have been influenced by the work of D.W. Griffith. This here was released several months after INTOLERANCE and I've got to think that Mix saw that film and decided to do his own cross-storied epic. This here clocks in at thirty-minutes, which is a lot longer than the majority of Mix's shorts from this period. The film also plays up the multiple story lines and of course brings them together during the final ten-minutes. The biggest problem here is that Mix obviously didn't have the same talent as Griffith because there's no inter cutting of the two stories. Instead the Mix sequence takes up the first ten-minutes with the Eyton story taking up the next ten. In fact, you get so caught up in the second story that you forget all about having watched the first! Still, I at least give Mix credit for trying something bigger than what he was normally doing and there's no question that this film remains entertaining and contains some nice drama. In fact, of all the Mix directed films I've seen to date this here clearly featured his best work. Silent film buffs will certainly want to check this one out and especially if you're a fan of the director-star.
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