'Hell's Hinges'

With a live improvised score by Matt Hagen + Avery Cooper! This violent, morally shocking early feature-length Western features America’s first cinematic cowboy hero, William S. Hart, who starred in producer Thomas Ince’s run of Westerns in the 1910s and became one of silent cinema’s most famous actors. Hell’s Hinges, Hart’s sixth feature for Ince, bears very little resemblance to later Hollywood formulas, in which a lone hero would tame a town through law and order. Not here. From its measured start, Hell’s Hinges builds to a nightmarish intensity.