Cinema
His Destiny
Neal Hart · 1928
Synopsis
Jack Bowen, a rancher, is serving a sentence for a crime he did not commit: Dick Thompson, whom he suspects of having killed his father, had him convicted. He escapes just before the prison warden pardons him, and is recaptured after stopping the runaway team of Betty, the warden's daughter. Released all the same, he goes to Calgary to compete in the Stampede. Thompson is there too, and tries to have him killed during the event.
Context
In 1927, a British law imposed on cinemas in the United Kingdom a quota of Empire films; this film, produced in Calgary by British Canadian Pictures, was the first conceived to take advantage of it, according to the Toronto festival's encyclopedia, and the company produced no other. The screenplay is by Daniel E. C. Campbell, an editor at the Calgary Herald, and several Calgarians appear in the cast, among them Mary Cross, daughter of the company's president. Between 1928 and 1937, twenty-two low-budget feature films were produced in Canada under this arrangement.
Who it is for
A silent film of seventy-three minutes; the Stampede and the landscapes of Alberta were filmed on location.
Prizes and reception
A box-office failure, blamed on the distributor's handling; the film pleased in Calgary, less elsewhere in Alberta.
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