Name: Nomads of the North
Genre: Drama
Released: 1920-09-26
Duration: 1 h 49 min
Rating: 5.8
Cast: Lon Chaney, Lewis Stone, Melbourne MacDowell

Lon Chaney stars as the handsome hero in this one (was The Penalty the film that started him down the path of playing villains and monsters?). A fur trapper who was stuck up in northern Canada for a year longer than he had planned, he returns home, some 300 miles south, to find his fiancée (Betty Blythe) about to marry the villainous son (Melbourne MacDowell) of the man who runs the town. Chaney gets into a fight and kills a man, but escapes with the girl. A while later, MacDowell finds the couple settled in the wilderness and enlists an honorable Mountie (Lewis Stone, who would go on to co-star in Grand Hotel) to bring Chaney to justice. It's a pretty standard melodrama from this period, but it's entertaining. The forest fire climax is quite well done. There's a lot of emphasis on Chaney's pets, a dog and a bear. Near the beginning, they get separated from their master (tethered together - you expect them to die horribly), and even have dialogue with each other. It almost turns into a silent Homeward Bound for a while!

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

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Betty Blythe and Lon Chaney in Nomads of the North (1920)

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Charles Smiley in Nomads of the North (1920)

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Spottiswoode Aitken, Betty Blythe, and Charles Smiley in Nomads of the North (1920)

Betty Blythe and Charles Smiley in Nomads of the North (1920)

Nomads of the North

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