American Civil War | Century Film Project

September 7, 2017

A Daughter of Dixie (1911)

This Civil War melodrama is a short from the Champion Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey that was screened at this year’s Cinecon on Monday, September 3. As always with those, I have only seen the film once, and have only my notes and memory to work from in reviewing it.

A young girl is seen in her home. Her brother enters in a Confederate uniform and she makes the usual tearful protestations. The family is supportive, but sad at the development. We then cut to a battle scene, shot so that we see only the Confederate side at first. Smoke and some explosions show us that they are under fire, and they fire rifles at enemies off-screen. Then we see “her lover,” who is among the Union forces, shown in similar fashion, and they fire at the opposite side of the screen, giving us a sense that the two sides are in conflict. Finally, they meet, and a full-fledged (but quite small) pitched battle takes place in a static shot. The lover is wounded and separated from his companions, and forced to flee the Rebels. He runs to the girl and begs for shelter. She hides him in a closet and tries to cover when her brother and some other men come searching for him. The brother realizes where the man must be hiding, but when he goes to find him, the girl grabs his rifle and points it at his chest, keeping the Confederates at bay for an hour while the lover escapes. Then the war ends and the family is reunited. When the Northern lover returns, the former Confederate welcomes him to his home.

An interesting dilemma is somewhat weakened by the easy resolution at the end. It seems to me that the sister would have been arrested and possibly lynched for collaborating with the enemy, and even assuming no legal or extra-legal difficulties, the brother has every reason to resent her threatening his life and to hold a grudge after the war. Alternately, it seems as though he and his men should question whether she really would shoot her own flesh and blood, and they likely would have called her bluff on the spot, possibly with tragic results that would not be so easily forgiven. But, I may be asking a bit much of a ten-minute melodrama. The director has rather ambitiously tried to tell a sweeping story of the war in a very simple format, and in places this is quite clever. At first I thought it was a bit cheap, showing the battle from one side only, but once I saw the other side and then the final clash and melee, I realized what they were doing, and saw it as a good way to mirror the two sides and show how an individual soldier would experience the fighting. Once again, this shows that others besides D.W. Griffith were working with the tropes of the Civil War from an early period of cinema.

Director: Unknown, possibly Ulysses S. Davis

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Unknown

Run Time: 10 Min

This movie has not been made available on home video or the Internet at this time.

April 12, 2016

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)

This is my contribution to the CMBA Spring Blogathon “Words…Words…Words.” Funny enough, this idea for a blogathon started with me, with the idea that we often focus too much on directors, and not on writers, when reviewing, analyzing, or discussing classic film. Then, lo and behold, I chose a movie to write about that was written and directed by the same fellow, Stuart Paton, who had a busy career at Universal (formerly IMP), but never got much recognition. This may in fact be his best-known movie, although he kept working until 1938.

As the story begins, a strange giant sea creature has been rampaging the seas. The American naval ship Abraham Lincoln is sent to investigate, and Professor Arronax (Dan Hanlon), from France, is invited along. He brings his daughter (Edna Pendleton), who rapidly becomes interested in Ned Land (Curtis Benton), the “famous harpoonist,” aboard ship. The ship is rammed by “the creature” which turns out to be the Nautilus, the fantastic submarine of the enigmatic Captain Nemo (Allen Holubar, who looks vaguely like an East Indian Santa Claus), and “Rudderless, the ‘Abraham Lincoln’ drifts on.” Nemo rescues all of the named characters and takes them prisoner. After they pledge not to escape, Nemo shows them the wonders of the underwater world, and even takes them hunting on the sea floor. When a pearl diver is caught in the clutches of a giant octopus, Nemo sends Ned Land and his Lieutenant out to rescue him.

Meanwhile, soldiers in a runaway Union Army Balloon are marooned on a mysterious island not far from the submarine. They find a wild girl living alone on the island (“a child of nature” played by Jane Gail). Nemo sees the castaways and sends them a present: a chest full of various necessities they will need to survive. One of the soldiers manages to coax the wild girl to live in his shelter, which he chastely guards from outside while she sleeps, stopping one of the other soldiers from attacking her. He also convinces her to trade her leopard-skin one-piece for men’s clothing.

Suddenly, the yacht of Charles Denver (William Welsh) arrives at the island. A former Indian colonial officer, he has been haunted by the ghost of a woman (Princess Daaker) that he attacked years ago; she stabbed herself rather than submit to him. He fled with her young daughter and then abandoned the child on the island. The long-tormented Denver has returned to see what became of her. The wild girl meanwhile relates the story of how she came to the island to the nice soldier. Denver quickly becomes disoriented and lost.

An evil Union soldier schemes and with help from surprisingly compliant yacht crewmen kidnaps the wild girl onto Denver’s yacht. Another soldier swims aboard to rescue her. Denver is shocked to find her in his cabin. At the same time, Nemo discovers that the yacht belongs to Denver, the enemy he has been seeking all these years. The Nautilus destroys the yacht with a torpedo, but the girl and her rescuer are saved from the water by Captain Nemo. In elaborate flashback scenes to India, Nemo reveals that he is Prince Daaker, and that he created the Nautilus to seek revenge on Charles Denver. He is overjoyed to discover that the abandoned wild girl is his long-lost daughter, but his emotion is such that he expires. His loyal crew bury him at the ocean bottom. They disband and the Nautilus is left to drift to its own watery grave.

Anyone who has read “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” will immediately notice that this plotline adds a great deal to that story. The source of most of it is Verne’s “Mysterious Island,” which served as a kind of sequel to “20,000 Leagues” and solved the mystery of Captain Nemo’s origin. By combining the two, writer-director Stuart Paton has given the audience a much more complete story, but he has added a number of expensive action sequences and cluttered the screen with more characters than we can keep track of. He has made matters worse by introducing two female characters, neither in the original books, apparently as love interests, although the romantic storylines are never paid off. It would have been quite shocking in the America of “The Birth of a Nation” had the Indian wild girl ended up married to the heroic white Union soldier, but we do not get that resolution here. I suspect it was cut for being too controversial.

Who are all these people?

OK, so it’s a busy storyline with a lot of characters, many of whom never even get the dignity of names, but does it remain true to Jules Verne? I would have to say yes, overall. Verne spent many pages of his novel describing the undersea wonders that Arronax was permitted to see through the “crystalline window” of the Nautilus, and, enamored of their new “underwater photography” techniques, the cameramen at Universal also linger on corals, sharks, and schools of fish. Actually, the camera never went into the water, but a system of watertight tubes and mirrors allowed the camera to shoot reflected images of underwater scenes staged in shallow sunlit waters. For 1916, this looks great, as do the diving suits the characters wear during their external ventures, with rather compact oxygen tanks attached.

These convincing effects were further complimented by a genuine full-scale submarine, painted to resemble the Nautilus as described by Verne. It’s not as exotic as the later Disney version (itself based on illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou), but it is clearly a functioning vessel, as is the Abraham Lincoln and most shots we see of Denver’s yacht; few if any miniatures are substituted for the ships. During the flashback sequence, we see an impressive palace and enormous city gates which dwarf the extras scrambling beneath them. In fact, the one effect that is disappointing is the octopus, which is just plain goofy-looking.

Director’s note: don’t put googly eyes on your scary monster.

All those effects apparently cost quite a bit, rather more than the still independent Universal Film Manufacturing Company could really afford. This was to be their big money release, and should have been a big hit, but it wound up costing so much that they couldn’t recoup the expenses. This may have partly contributed to Paton’s later bad reputation as a director. The reviews at the time, to judge at least from “Moving Picture World” were fairly kind, and particularly enthusiastic about the underwater photography (including, to my surprise, the octopus!). The reviewer was somewhat mixed on the acting, and a bit left-handed about the directing (“Stuart Paton…has been confronted by many difficult problems and, in the main, has solved them with much skill”). To us today this movie remains an impressive technical achievement from a century ago, but maybe not the most compelling version of the imaginative tale ever told.

Director: Stuart Paton

Camera: Eugene Gaudio

Starring: Allen Holubar, William Welsh, Jane Gail, Edna Pendleton, Dan Hanlon, Curtis Benton

Run Time: 1 Hr, 40 Min

You can see it for free: here (no music) or here (bad music. Don’t say I didn’t warn you).

12 Comments

November 23, 2015

Civil War Films of the Silent Era (1913, 1915, 2000)

Worldcat link: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/45711746

This collection of Thomas H. Ince films, sorted by a common theme, may be out of print today from Image Entertainment, but was easy enough for me to procure through Interlibrary Loan. It contains three of the movies I’ve reviewed recently: “The Coward,” “The Drummer of the 8^th,” and “Granddad,” and pretty much nothing else. No special features, no commentary, not even a booklet with an essay about Ince and his work, at least none in the edition I got. Just the movies, plain and simple. The menu pages have electronic music turned up way too high (much higher in volume than on the movies themselves), and there are chapter menus, at least. The music is created by Eric Beheim and “his electronic Cotton Creek Orchestra,” and it has most of the themes you’d expect for Civil War movies. It’s not outstanding, like a score by Jon Mirsalis, but it is intentional and fits the action, unlike some silent scores where someone just drops a needle and goes for a coffee break. Overall, I recommend this collection as of historical interest, especially for those who think Griffith was the be-all and end-all of silent Civil War drama.

November 17, 2015

Granddad (1913)

This is one more movie made by Thomas H. Ince during the years that saw the fiftieth anniversary of the American Civil War, and once again, I find comparisons to D.W. Griffith are hard to avoid. In this case, however, although the movie includes some Civil War battle footage, it is in essence a social examination more akin to “The House of Darkness” or “A Corner in Wheat” than to “Birth of a Nation.” Even here, I find Ince’s subtlety and humanity to be superior in some ways to Griffith’s approach, although it may be the case that Griffith was the more technically adept.

Our story begins here with a little girl (Mildred Harris) who lives with her old grandfather (J. Barney Sherry). Their mutual love for one another is obvious, although the old man does like a nip from his bottle now and again. One day, they receive a letter from her father (Frank Borzage) telling them that he’s bringing home a new “mother” for Mildred and tells granddad to hide the bottle, because she’s a church woman. Mildred thinks of a good hiding place and granddad goes out to the bar to celebrate. When he comes home to meet his new daughter-in-law, she immediately smells it on his breath and shows that she does NOT approve. Eventually, she finds the bottle and confers with her blue-nosed friends, who assure her that such a man should not be allowed to influence a young girl. So, she confronts the old man and warns him to leave, despite her husband’s protests of the debt he owes his father. Granddad sneaks out during the night, leaving a note to assure Mildred he’ll find work on a farm and not to worry about him.

All does not go well, however, and granddad ends up in a work house, although he keeps sending letters home talking about the fresh air and good food of farm life. One day, Mildred’s step mom sends her out with a group of social reformers to visit the poor house. Of course, she recognizes one of the laborers as her grandfather. They exchange very affectionate greetings and she goes back to tell her parents what has happened. Meanwhile, a mysterious retired Confederate Colonel (William Desmond Taylor) has shown up in town, looking for “Jabez Burr,” the Union man who saved his life. That’s granddad, of course, and the Colonel proceeds to give us a thrilling flashback of his battle experiences and encounter with the Yankee who saved his life. Mildred’s father is finally shamed into bringing his father home, but it’s too late, the harsh life of the poorhouse has made him ill. He dies and a final epilogue assures us he was buried with military honors and his minor faults forgotten.

More Ince-ian combat.

Whereas Griffith would have told this story by making each character iconic, and the entire situation would have had a heavy-handed message (probably unnecessarily enunciated in beginning and closing Intertitles), the Ince approach is far more individual and subtle. Although he relies on much the same kind of female busy-body as an antagonist, one never gets the idea that he has created a caricature. The mother acts out of what she thinks are the best interests of the family, she simply doesn’t understand the consequences of her act, nor look far enough to see the complex and decent person she is choosing to label a harmful drunk. Each of the characters, except perhaps the Colonel, is sketched out with enough detail for us to see them as individuals, rather than representatives of some segment of society.

That said, I find some aspects of Ince’s directing (or possibly Jay Hunt’s – I couldn’t verify which of them actually directed here) and producing not quite up to snuff. For one thing, characters frequently go out of their way to E-NUN-CI-ATE so that we can (hopefully) lip-read their words. I find that slows down the pace and makes the acting look silly, as when Mildred says “I KNOW. THE CLOCK,” to make sure we know her hiding place for the whiskey. Speaking of Mildred, I fear that Ince, or someone at the company, was trying a little too hard to make her into the new Mary Pickford (like they needed a new one). She’s got a short version of Mary’s wig, she’s made up like Mary, and at times she seems to be quite consciously imitating Mary’s mannerisms. But, sorry to say, she’s not Mary. I found this a bit distracting, where I think I would have enjoyed a more natural performance from her. In general, I find Ince’s movies a little slow, even for a century ago. He edits and cross-cuts well enough, but he tends to hold shots longer than Griffith or some of his contemporaries, and scenes play out longer than they need to. Nevertheless, I did find this movie, as well as the others I’ve looked at recently, to be emotionally affecting and well written. Where Griffith seems to have worked out a lot of his problems in the editing room, Ince may have been the better scenarist and planner, and that makes the movies memorable and interesting.

Director: Thomas H. Ince or Jay Hunt

Camera: Unknown

Cast: Mildred Harris, J. Barney Sherry, Frank Borzage, William Desmond Taylor

Run Time: 29 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music).

3 Comments

November 11, 2015

The Drummer of the 8th (1913)

This is another Civil War drama made during the 50^th anniversary of that conflict, but pre-dates “The Birth of a Nation” by almost two years. Director Thomas Ince, working for the New York Motion Picture Company at the time, chose a decidedly “dark” message for this movie, in contrast to the usually uplifting tone of war movies at the time.

To be sure, it opens conventionally enough, showing how the advent of the war disrupts a seemingly idyllic family unit (Northern, in this case, but the sides could be changed with no particular impact on the story). In addition to the usual tearful farewell, when the eldest son Jack marches off with his infantry unit, however, we also get a secret night-time departure when the younger son Billy (played by diminutive Cyril Gardner, who was fourteen at the time, but looks younger) sneaks off to enlist as a drummer boy. The two young men serve for the next two years, separated by the circumstances of war. When Jack is due to return home, he writes of his inability to locate Billy. We then follow Billy as he bravely grabs a fallen man’s rifle during a battle, is captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp, the escapes, being wounded in the shoulder on his way out. Billy hides in the Confederate headquarters tent, and is able to overhear the plans for an attack. Of course, he rushes back to his unit (again being wounded in the leg along the way) and gives his report. Unfortunately, all the blood he left in his hiding place gives him away, so the Confederates change their plan and his intelligence causes the Union to lose the battle. Before that, he wrote home that he would be returning with honors and asked that his favorite meal be prepared for his return. His sister and brother go to meet the train, and are confused why there is no sign of him. We then see Union pallbearers unload a small coffin and bear it to the home. They knock, and Billy’s mother comes out to be confronted by the body of her long lost son.

Ince was pretty daring to put out such a dark storyline in 1913, and it’s lucky that this film has survived, because it makes such a stark contrast with the movies of D. W. Griffith and others who used the Civil War as a springboard for their ideas. It has a structural similarity to the Ince-produced feature, “The Coward,” but in that story the fearful character is redeemed by delivering covertly gained information, while in this version a brave lad is killed because of doing exactly the same thing. There are several short battle scenes in this movie, most of which rely on fairly close-angle shots to give a sense of a larger battlefield, but I found them effective if not spectacular. A similar tactic give the impression of a crowded railroad station at the end with relatively few extras. Ince makes good use of close-ups in a few places, especially to show us Billy in hiding and wounded (the clarity of the blood on his shirt is a striking contrast to the way such things would be handled in later “classic era” movies). The intercutting of the two boys’ stories, and that of the family on the homefront, is less magisterial – at times it is difficult to understand what Ince wants us to focus on – but no less innovative.

Director: Thomas H. Ince

Camera: Unknown

Cast: Cyril Gardner, Mildred Harris, Frank Borzage

Run Time: 28 Min

I found two edited versions of it online: here (cut to one reel) and here (more complete, but without the original intertitles).

1 Comment

November 7, 2015

The Coward (1915)

Given that this Civil War drama came out in November, 1915, it’s pretty inevitable that comparisons will be made to “The Birth of a Nation.” The Silent Era even goes so far as to say that this movie, produced by Thomas Ince and directed by Reginald Barker (the same team that gave us “The Italian” at the beginning of the year) was “made to capitalize on the success of” the better-known D.W. Griffith production. Maybe, but it’s worth noting that Ince had already produced several other Civil War movies in recent years, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of that conflict, and that plot-wise, it owes very little to the Griffith spectacular.

The story centers around the Virginia family of one retired Col. Winslow (Frank Keenan). Winslow had sent a letter offering his own services, and that of his son, to the authorities on hearing of the outbreak of war, but receives a reply stating that they cannot accept such a sacrifice from a man of his advanced years. This leaves his son, Frank (Charles Ray), who is out in the park looking at birdies with his girlfriend when all of his friends rush off to enlist. The girl drags him to the recruiting office, but he bolts before signing up. Apparently, he has a crushing fear that he might be a coward, and so tries to avoid situations that might put his courage to the test. When his dad finds out, he is furious, and forces the boy to sign up, threatening him with a revolver and reminding him of the family name. The first night he is on patrol, Frank panics at the sound of a cow crashing through the fields, and loses his gun before almost blundering into the Union patrol. He hides in a freezing-cold river and manages to evade capture, then runs home, where his (black-face) servants feed him and put him to bed. Of course, dad finds out that he deserted his post and is deeply shamed. His response? “The name of private Winslow is on their rolls, and someone must answer,” he tells his wife before going off to take Frank’s place as a private in the Confederate Army (you’d think someone would notice that Frank got really old overnight, but whatever).

When the Union army takes over the town, they commandeer the Winslow place as a headquarters. Frank again panics and hides in the attic, while his mother and servants have to feed and otherwise serve the officers and men. The officers discuss their tactical situation while Frank listens from the attic, discovering that they have a weakness in their center which cannot be built up for at least 24 hours, but will be fine so long as the South does not attack during that time. Frank is suddenly seized with patriotism and decides to bring this information to his compatriots at arms. He attacks a guard and steals his uniform and weapons, then breaks into the conference room, taking the map and cleverly escaping by shooting out the candles, then hiding under the table while all the officers run around like ninnies in the dark. He steals a horse and makes a break for the Confederate lines, with a squad of soldiers on his heels. His father is on patrol, and, seeing a Union soldier dashing toward their lines, shoots him at a distance. He falls back into the freezing river, but makes his way in toward camp. When he is captured by Confederate soldiers (he’s still in Union Blues, remember), he insists on seeing the Commanding Officer and gives his information. An attack is ordered and a bloody battle follows, in which his father proves his courage by taking the flag when the current flag bearer runs away, continuing to fire his pistol while waving it. The battle is victorious, but Frank, wounded by his father’s bullet, lies inconsolable in bed. The officer he reported to orders “private Winslow” to come see his son, but he insists he has no son until he learns that Frank is responsible for the victory Finally, the old soldier takes his wounded son in his arms and weeps.

Shuddup, Meathead!

Now, this movie shares some of the problems of “Birth of a Nation.” For example, it is based in an understanding that its audience will sympathize with the “lost cause” of the South and romanticism of Southern concepts of honor and family duty. Modern audiences will be more alarmed by the use of blackface for the servants – the maid is passably like Hattie McDaniel, but the butler looks like Archie Bunker in the episode of “All in the Family” when he participated in a Minstrel Show. But, unlike “Birth,” this movie is not a glorification of the Southern cause nor a deliberate distortion of the history of its occupation. It is a character study of one young man’s fear – he could as easily have been fighting for the other side without making any changes in the story. The Union officers are not rapacious fiends; they treat the civilians with respect even though it is clearly a burden for them to have their house commandeered. The code of honor which requires such brutality from the father is not being held up as a noble ideal, it is rather the premise within which Frank must work out his psychological drama.

The movie is at its best dealing with these psychological questions. Barker makes frequent use of close-ups to show us the turmoil of father and son, and also intercuts with close-ups (for example on the father’s pistol when he forces his son to enlist) that escalate the drama. This is not surprising, since he made such good use of close-ups in “The Italian.” On the other hand, the battle sequences are nowhere near as effective as those in “Birth,” mostly they consist of a lot of smoke and people running around; very little of the drama is worked out in the action scenes. The pursuit of Frank on horseback is somewhat more effectively done, however. Much of the movie seemed slow to me, often when it was very obvious what the emotional moment was we had to wait for several visual exchanges between the actors and an intertitle before we could move on to the next situation. Nevertheless, perhaps in part because of the tension this generated, I did find it emotionally satisfying at the end to see the two men reconciled. I couldn’t help thinking, however, about the defeat they were bound to share in coming years, and wondering whether Frank had actually extended the bloody conflict by bravely causing the Union setback.

Director: Reginald Barker

Camera: Joseph H. August, Robert S. Newhard

Cast: Frank Keenan, Charles Ray, Gertrude Claire, Nick Cogley

Run Time: 1 hour, 17 Min

I cannot find this movie for free on the Internet, if you find it, please let us know in the comments.

2 Comments

September 5, 2015

The Darling of the CSA (1912)

It turns out that not just D.W. Griffith was making movies about the Civil War during the early teens. The Kalem company produced a series of them between 1911 and 1915, which includes this tautly-edited short.

Anna Q. Nilsson

Anna Q. Nilsson, who appeared as Marie Deering in “Regeneration” three years later, is the title character, Agnes Lane, a daring spy for the South during the Civil War. She delivers an important message regarding an attack on a Yankee fort, then infiltrates the fort and turns herself in, only to change into a Union soldier’s clothes and escape with more confidential information. The Confederate soldiers love her, and treat her with respect, despite her un-ladylike profession. During the attack, morale appears to flag, but she sneaks out a message that she has been captured by the Yankees and is due to be executed, urging the boys to greater heroism. As they capture the fort, she again infiltrates and pretends to be grateful to her “rescuers.”

The simple story is told with cross-cutting and fairly rapid editing for the time, although I didn’t find the action scenes as compelling as their Biograph counterparts. Several times, corpses on the battlefield move or react to being stepped on, showing that no one thought to substitute dummies for actors between the shots. I was interested in the camera angles chosen, which were often 45 degrees to walls or tent sides, suggesting that the cinematographer was thinking outside of the usual box. Nilsson, in addition to her cross-dressing scene, undergoes several wardrobe changes: at first we see her in a lady’s riding outfit, but during the battle she wears the white of a nurse. Care seems to have been taken to get the period costumes right, nothing looks like the early twentieth century in this movie. Although Kalem had a Hollywood studio at this time for shooting Westerns, I suspect that this movie was made closer to the New York headquarters, based on the appearance of backgrounds and foliage.

Although the movie fits into the general trend of nostalgia for the “lost cause” of the South, there is no explicit political or racial message in the film, The Yankees are not shown as “bad,” they are simply enemy soldiers, to be overcome at any cost. This also means that Nilsson’s heroism is not countered by any compelling villainy, which probably only works because the movie is so short.

This review has been another movie I was able to see in the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood thanks to Cinecon.

Directed by: Sidney Olcott and Kenean Buel

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Anna Q. Nilsson, Henry Hallam

Run Time: 10 Min

I have not been able to find this movie for free on the Internet. If you do, please tell me about it in the comments.

1 Comment

June 10, 2015

The Battle (1911)

This movie has a lot in common with the other early D.W. Griffith representations of the Civil War, with one big exception: the story is told from the point of view of a Union soldier (Charles West, who wore the opposite uniform in “Swords and Hearts” and “The Fugitive”), rather than a Confederate. The storyline roughly parallels that of The Red Badge of Courage – a young infantryman departs proudly for the war, but when he gets his “Baptism of Fire,” he flees in panic. Shamed by his cowardice, he becomes determined to redeem himself with acts of courage, and winds up saving the day by leading reinforcements and ammunition to his old regiment. Blanche Sweet (from “The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch” and “The Eternal Mother”) gets a small but important role as his sweetheart – he runs to her home in his initial flight, and she scorns him and prays for his redemption when he returns to the battlefield. Obviously, themes are also present that we saw in “The House with Closed Shutters” and “Swords and Hearts” as well.

It strikes me that of the many Civil War shorts that Griffith made, this was actually the most elaborate, in terms of staging the battle scenes, and certainly made use of the most actors and extras. He basically rehearses the seizing of trenches as it would be done four years later in “The Birth of a Nation.” The men on horseback riding to the rescue also mimics “Birth,” although Bitzer does not use a moving camera here. Some powerful images include the Confederates emerging from the smoke to invade a trench the heroic dash of the ammunition wagons, and the Rebels lighting fires to halt them, causing at least one to explode. Unfortunately, the slight storyline gets somewhat lost in all this action, and we lose track of Blanche Sweet after the wounded commanding officer requisitions her house as a medical station (had there been more time, I imagine her nursing the wounded and hear the story of her love’s redemption). This is certainly not a bad film, so far as it goes, and the editing and cinematography are at the top of their field for the time, but it winds up sacrificing character for thrills.

Director: D.W. Griffith

Camera: Billy Bitzer

Starring: Charles West, Blanche Sweet, Robert Harron, Spottiswood Aitken, Edwin August, Lionel Barrymore, Dell Henderson

Run Time: 16 Min, 35 seconds

You can watch it for free: here.

2 Comments

June 9, 2015

Swords and Hearts (1911)

Several of the themes we’ve encountered before are present in this Biograph short by D.W. Griffith, including cross-dressing, blackface, questions of honor and loyalty, and rampaging Yankee looters. Here, we also get a comment on social worth, as the heroine (Dorothy West, who was in “The House with the Closed Shutters” and “His Trust Fulfilled”) is a member of the “poor white class,” which the male love interest (Wilfred Lucas, from “Enoch Arden” and “His Trust”) ignores for a more “beautiful, but calculating” wealthy neighbor (Claire McDowell, also in “His Trust” and “What Shall We Do with Our Old?”). She seizes the chance to replace him on a daring courier mission when Yankees are lurking about, and goes on a wild horse ride, with the enemy at her back, even shooting one of them down when he gets too close! Once again, Dorothy acquits herself well, and bears up under the wound she receives while doing her duty, but this time she doesn’t die for her efforts. A loyal African American slave hides away Lucas’s fortune and manages to save his father after the discouraged looters torch the house. Then, when Lucas’s lady love spurns him for a Yankee officer, he and Dorothy can have the last laugh – he’s rich again after all.

All pretty typical stuff, and becoming redundant among the tropes we are used to seeing Griffith deploy. He uses editing to maximize suspense, particularly during the horse chase and also the rescue of the old man, which has elements in common with “An Unseen Enemy” as we anticipate the arrival of his savior – but will it be too late? Bitzer’s camerawork is more restrained here, with no panoramic shots of the scenery, but the chase is well covered. McDowell, as the fickle fiancé turns in a memorable performance, but West is once again the real focus. The problem is that this time she can’t top what she gave in “The House with Closed Shutters,” although her longing for Lucas from afar is convincing.

Director: D.W. Griffith

Camera: Billy Bitzer

Starring: Wilfred Lucas, Dorothy West, Claire McDowell, Charles West, Verner Clarges

Run Time: 16 Min

You can watch it for free: here.

3 Comments

June 6, 2015

His Trust Fulfilled (1911)

About a year ago, I briefly discussed the first part of this two-part story from D.W. Griffith when he was working at Biograph. It’s worth going back and looking at that post, because the two movies are a continuation of the same story. Griffith always was interested in finding way to work in longer formats (even though, as I’ve said before, his greatest strength seems to have been in making shorts). In this case, he did it by making a “sequel” at the same time as he shot the first part, although the opening intertitle assures us that “each is a complete story in itself.” I suspect that note was added by Biograph to assure its distributors and exhibitors that they would not require anyone to rent two-reel movies at a time when movies were sold by-the-foot, rather than by-the-story. At any rate, it is likely that some audiences only saw half of the story.

The story is that of “an old faithful negro servant” (read: slave) of a Confederate soldier (Dell Henderson, who we’ve seen in “The Unchanging Sea” and “The Last Drop of Water”), who takes on the role of protecting the widow and orphaned child after the father is killed in the Civil War. The main character, George, is played with understated dignity and humility by Wilfred Lucas, a white man in blackface, which will make it difficult at best for modern audiences to accept him. He saves the daughter (Gladys Egan again, from “In the Border States” and “The Adventures of Dollie”) from the burning house after a group of Union looters torches it, then running back in to rescue also the fallen hero’s sword, symbol of “his trust” and arguably a phallic symbol of his acceptance of white supremacy. He takes both back to his meager shack, and sleeps outside in the cold to preserve their honor. The mother (Claire McDowell, also in “What Shall We Do with Our Old?” and “The New York Hat”) nevertheless dies from the pain of her loss, apparently shocked to the core by her circumstances. George gives his meager savings to a white lawyer who refuses to shake his hand in order to see to it that the child is brought up and schooled with her own kind. She grows into a somewhat bouncy Dorothy West (from “The House with Closed Shutters” and “The Fugitive”), who attracts the hand of the lawyer’s young cousin from England. George, having fulfilled his life’s purpose – keeping the trust of his long-dead master – shuffles sadly off after the wedding and back to his quarters, where he holds the sword gently to his breast. In what may be a dream sequence, the lawyer appears and finally shakes George’s hand.

The screen’s first “interracial” handshake?

In spite of the clearly racist content, I won’t deny that the story has some dramatic and emotional content that still works. The Civil War battle is less effective than what we see in “The House with Closed Shutters,” which may be attributable to a lower budget, but it’s also less central to the storyline. Lucas’s performance, which at first seems virulently stereotypical, takes on a more dignified cast as we see George age and face the trials of keeping his word. In a way, what Griffith is giving us here is the “positive case” for racism and Southern tradition – a world in which people knew their destiny on Earth and kept their honor by living up to their expectations. That this world is mythical makes it no less effective as a cinematic representation, although of course accepting it without criticism leads down the road that got us to “The Birth of a Nation.”

Director: D.W. Griffith

Camera: Billy Bitzer

Starring: Wilfred Lucas, Claire McDowell, Gladys Egan, Dorothy West, Verner Clarges, Harry Hyde

Run Time: 11 Min

You can watch it (along with “His Trust”) for free: here.

3 Comments

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	Dorothy Fitzpatrick on White Fawn’s Devotion…
	popegrutch on White Fawn’s Devotion…
	. on Mercy the Mummy Mumbled (…
	Jesse James on Alice Guy Films a Phonoscène…
	Elise Dixon on Kiriki, Japanese Acrobats…

Tag: American Civil War