a5c7b9f00b Bandits capture a gold shipment from the Colorado mines. Where did they get the information that the shipment was to be made? A detective is sent from the company&#39;s Chicago office to aid John Davis, mine superintendent, in finding the criminals. Under their very noses another shipment is stolen. Frank Lawlor, clerk in the office, loves Davis&#39; daughter, Dora. The girl feels a strange repugnance for the man. When the detective Murdock arrives, her woman&#39;s heart awakens. Lawler is angry, but conceals his feelings. Another shipment is to be made. Murdock gathers a posse and sends them out. He is starting himself for their hiding place when Dora comes along on her horse. Love drives out other thoughts for a few moments, when a sudden flash of sunlight strikes their faces. Murdock is startled. Taking his field-glasses he sees Lawler on a distant hill, flashing a signal with a mirror to someone below. The treacherous clerk returns to the office. Murdock, leading the posse, captures the accomplices. Dora is holding Lawlor at the office by pretending to accept his hated love making when the posse returns. Seeing the game is up, Lawlor attempts to escape, is shot and his body brought back. Dora and Murdock acknowledge their lovethe picture fades. A company detective goes undercover to expose a gang that uses inside information to rob gold shipments. BY THE SUN&#39;S RAYS, a very early Chaney&amp; Browning collaboration, makes good use of Chaney&#39;s _patibular jaw to tell a short concise story about a detective who comes at a mine to investigate how the gold shipments are always attacked. Chaney is the one who always gives away the moment of the secret departure of the shipments. Brief moments with some miners are shown; also, the detective bureau that sends its man to find out who betrays.<br/><br/>Chaney, the villain of this short piece, has a moment of amorous impetuousness—with the otherwise nice Agnes Vernon, who refuses his advances.<br/><br/>Agnes Vernon is really cuteDora, the object of Chaney&#39;s vain desires, and she makes the best out of her short scenesa provincial coquette; MacQuarrie is the detective, and looks rather dolt, anyway his bodily desires are expressed in an appropriately idyllic setting while Chaney&#39;s take the form of the brutality, mindlessness and misplaced impetuosity. Anyway, given the shortness of this flick, Chaney is already quite remarkable and pointed, he has presence, that ominous leaden gloomy glow, and stands out among his screen partners.<br/><br/>Well, it seems I have already told more than is in the flick itself. Yeah, poetical in a poetical—realist way, yet it serves only to allude to the way used by Chaney to accomplish his mischievous plan . Enjoy your ten minutes with Chaney .<br/><br/>The title suggests a Pabst melodrama; which the movie isn&#39;t. Lon Chaney made eight films in all for director Tod Browning and it would have been more, had he lived longer, because Browning had cast himCount Dracula in the role that ended up with Bela Lugosi. So far, The Unknown is my favourite but I&#39;ve only seen half of them, if you can count what&#39;s left of London After Midnighta complete film. As a stills reconstruction it&#39;s fascinating, but it isn&#39;t enough to even ratea movie. By the Sun&#39;s Rays does still exist, thankfully, even though it was their first collaboration and was made in 1914, no less than thirteen years before London After Midnight. As such it&#39;s a historic piece of film, no doubt about it.<br/><br/>In fact this is so far back that Chaney isn&#39;t even top billed. M J MacQuarrie, whoever he is, has the starring role&#39;John Murdock, the Detective&#39;. Chaney has to settle for second on the bill,&#39;Frank Lawler, the Clerk&#39;, but he stamps his authority on the film in about half a second flat, shifting around in character like a chameleon while everyone else is just there. Lawler is obviously a bad man, leaving the Deep River Mining Co offices to orchestrate a robbery of their departing gold shipment, and it&#39;s the job of the good guy detective to catch him.<br/><br/>Unfortunately for M J MacQuarrie, there are only two reasons to watch this film. Chaney is one and Chaney and Browning together is the other. By the time detective John Murdock arrives to look into how the bandits are getting their information, it&#39;s already Chaney&#39;s film, literallywellfigurativelywe&#39;re five minutes into a film that only has a ten minute running time. MacQuarrie seems perfectly adequate in the part until Chaney walks onto screen at which point we simply forget who he is or why he&#39;s there. Chaney may be a little too much of the silent era villain but he&#39;s still amazing to watch.<br/><br/>For Browning&#39;s part, I get the impression that there&#39;s more going on here than was the norm at the time. To be fair, I&#39;m not really well versed in anything except slapstick from 1914 but this is still a notch or two above what I expected. Beyond the focal characters, there are plenty of others doing a lot more than just sitting around taking up screen space, for a start. It&#39;s also hardly the most detailed and deep plot ever put on screen, even in a ten minute short, but it compares well to things like the low budget westerns John Wayne was churning out in the thirties before he became a star. Given that it was made a couple of decades earlier in the year Charlie Chaplin made his first film, that&#39;s saying something.
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