Big Stakes (1922)

A Brilliant Conflict

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

"Big Stakes" is certainly a most unusual western, but one that's most definitely well worth seeing. The framework is the usual two men in love with the same girl, but this plot is cleverly entangled with other issues which I won't go into here as I'm sure you'll want to see this movie for yourself if only for a glimpse of the star, popular J.B. Warner. Already our hero looks like a very sick man, especially in his close-ups, but despite his sunken cheeks and skeletal frame, he still holds charisma. The support cast is also top-notch with the super-lovely Elinor Fair on constant display as the female in dispute and Robert Henry Grey (who was also to die young and at the very height of his profession) as her amazing, turncoat villain/lover. With Warner, Fair and/or Grey constantly on screen, that doesn't leave much room for cute, diminutive Willie Mae Carson, who plays the turncoat hero's original love interest. She made only six film appearances between 1919 and 1928, and then retired from the movies (and presumably show biz) completely although she stayed put in L.A. until she died in 1976. I bet no-one bothered to interview her! Available on an excellent Apha DVD coupled with yet another excellent, must-see western, "A Desperate Chance".

The name Big Stakes comes from a gamble the Southwest cowboy hero (J.B.Warner) proposes when he is captured by Mexicans from across the border: that they settle the issue with "brincadores" (jumping beans.)The story has a contemporary setting and is somewhat unusual in allowing a romance between this white Westerner and a Hispanic lady (Elinor Fair) though the man eventually lands up pairing with a white woman. There is also a critique of the recently reinvigorated Ku Klux Klan, referred to here as the Night Riders: unlike in Griffith's The Birth Of A Nation where the KKK rides to the rescue, here they are shown attacking a town, and it is non-white (Mexican) forces who help the hero rescue the white woman from their clutches. The intertitles are somewhat cutesy, however, and contain the (hopefully) now obsolete term "spiggoty", a word going back as far as Jack London, to refer to Hispanics. The film also benefits from the performance of the heavy set H.S. Karr as Skinny, the skeptical sidekick, and from nice pictorial touches by award winning cinematographer Clyde De Vinna (White Shadows In The South Seas.) The tinted print shown on Turner Classic Movies has beautiful yellow and green effects, on top of blue tinting, in the scene of the street on fire. For fans of sinister animals, a caged gila monster is used in one sequence to threaten the American and his Latina lover.

A cowboy hero has some run-ins with a local bully. The bully always gets the worst of it, but the bully vows to eventually get revenge. At the same time, the hero manages to meet a pretty señorita and they begin making eyes at each other. The problem is, she already has a boyfriend and he AND the bully both look like they will eventually kill the handsome hero.While some of the story elements of this film are a bit odd, the overall style of the film is pretty much the typical B-Western that Hollywood made so often from the 1920s-1950s. Instead of W.B. Warner, this film could have just as likely had Gene Autry, Ken Maynard or Hopalong Cassidy in the lead--the format is that familiar. In other words, you have the noble and handsome cowboy in the lead, a silly sidekick who is rarely there for anything other than comic relief and it's all wrapped up in only about one hour.What makes this a bit different is that in addition to the lovely local girl, there is a Hispanic girl love interest as well--something Hollywood would not that often until the 1940s and 50s due to prejudices in much of the US about miscegenation--intimate relations between Whites and anyone else (though many Hispanics are just as pale and pasty-skinned as anyone else). In fact, to make such a pairing more tolerable to idiots out there worried about this pairing, the girl was from "100% Castillian blood" and was played by a very American-looking actress (Elinor Fair). And, oddly, the bad guy used the local version of the KKK to help him in his evil deeds. Because of it's anti-Klan, entreaty for close relations between Americans and Mexicans and pro-dating Mexicans, the film did try to be a bit deeper than the usual film in the genre--but it also pulled its punches, so to speak, because at the time, movie makers could only push so far. Nowadays, such a pairing wouldn't even be noticed--except by total morons (and, fortunately, they are becoming less and less as time goes by).As far as the rest of the film goes, there are only a few surprises. One is the part where you get to see the fat sidekick actually gets to beat up the bad guy--a rarity in these films. Another is that the Mexican boyfriend and the hero decide who gets the girl by betting on, of all things, jumping beans!! Pretty weird stuff, huh?! But overall, it's a pretty run-of-the-mill film except for its progressive stance towards Mexicans.

An excellent silent western starring the now unfortunately forgotten J.B. Warner. Told with good humor and interesting camerawork, we have Mr. Warner in love with a lovely Spanish senorita, his life saved by a jumping bean, then leading the Mexican army to rescue a woman from the Ku Klux Klan. Surviving prints are a bit dupy after eighty years, but it's still a pleasant effort and well worth your time.