3 Bad Men

John Ford's 1926 silent film is set during a land rush in Dakota. Three outlaws decide to help a young woman whose father has been killed; their intentions are unclear at first, and then they make it their business to protect her and find her a good husband. The film carries early versions of many themes Ford would work later in his westerns: the founding of a community, the arrival of the law and the outcast figure who sacrifices himself. Its best known passage is the land race, with thousands of horses and wagons moving at once, shot on a large scale and counted among the most ambitious sequences of its time. Humour and sentiment run alongside each other. It is among the best preserved of Ford's silent works. Who it's for: viewers who like silent cinema and classic westerns. Who it's not for: anyone unused to silent film; the telling depends on intertitles.