When Intolerance flopped in 1916, it nearly sank the Triangle Film Corporation; by summer 1917, Griffith, Ince and Sennett, the company’s best directors, had all left. The newly arrived Frank Borzage got his chance to direct his own films, but of the dozen or so produced by Triangle, only two are known to exist. Until They Get Me is one of them, a western imbued with Borzage’s personal style.
Hervé Dumont commented in 1993: “Until They Get Me is a rare gem, probably one of the most beautiful pieces of the genre to be directed in the 1910s. Flashes of raw poetry mix with haunting eroticism, and only King Vidor or Nicholas Ray would come up with anything equivalent. In the cast were Jack Curtis, an old-timer in cowboy films, the young Texan Joe King, and the ravishing sprite Pauline Starke, a sixteen-year-old”.
Yes she is ravishing, and the whole film is wonderful, not only as a western of the 1910’s, but wonderful full stop. Three people meet by chance and their destinies are intertwined, the woman acting as a link between the two men. All three change within, transformed by time and feelings, not plot points. The tomboy girl grows up into a young beauty who knows her power, the involuntary murderer grows tired of being a fugitive, and the radiant hero of the Canadian Mounted Police loses himself in his obsession with the fugitive and becomes awkward under the spell of love.

Mariann Lewinsky