Enoch Arden (William Christy Cabanne, Majestic 1915)

William Christy Cabanne: Enoch Arden (1915) starring Lillian Gish and Wallace Reid. Photo: IMDb.

AA: I missed this screening but include J. B. Kaufman's text to keep a full run of the program notes of The Griffith Project 8.

The third Enoch Arden in the Griffith Project. The previous ones, directed by Griffith: After Many Years (1908) and Enoch Arden (1911).

ENOCH ARDEN (Majestic Motion Picture Co., US 1915)
    Dir.: William Christy Cabanne; supv.: D. W. Griffith; cast: Alfred Paget, Lillian Gish, Wallace Reid; 35 mm, 3502 ft, 58’ (16 fps), George Eastman House (Casselton / Larson Collection).
    Preserved and printed 1997.
    English intertitles.
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 14 Oct 2004

J. B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 514]: "Considering that Griffith hardly ever remade one of his films, it’s especially remarkable to find a story produced in three different versions, as Enoch Arden was. We’ve already seen the first two, both produced at Biograph: After Many Years (1908), which is not strictly based on Tennyson’s poem but clearly derives from it, and the two-reel Enoch Arden in 1911. This multiplicity of versions probably has something to do with the prestige associated with Tennyson’s name, but in addition it may well indicate a fondness for the story on Griffith’s part. (After all, despite numerous stage adaptations, Enoch Arden doesn’t appear to have been particularly popular with other filmmakers.) Technically, of course, this feature-length 1915 version is directed not by Griffith but by Christy Cabanne. But it’s no discredit to Griffith to say that this version is, in some respects, the best of the three; not only did Griffith supervise the film, but it’s clear that Cabanne was heavily influenced by the previous Griffith-directed versions."

"This is strikingly evident in the film’s structure. The intercutting in After Many Years, implying a telepathic connection between Charles Inslee on the island and Florence Lawrence at home, has given that film a degree of latter-day notoriety, but we can infer that Griffith was equally taken with the effect in 1908. For his subsequent 1911 version he expanded on it, interweaving the scenes of shipwreck survivor and wife far more extensively than in the 1908 version – even though (as Tom Gunning has pointed out in D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film, p. 112) the original poem had offered little or no precedent for either formal interweaving or the idea of a telepathic connection between husband and wife. By 1915 the device has become a tradition, and Cabanne cuts between the two threads of the story with freewheeling abandon. The story is faithful to the original poem (most of the titles are taken directly from it, though often condensed and modified), but in terms of formal structure Cabanne is taking his cues not from Tennyson but from Griffith."

"The influence of the earlier film versions can also be seen in such scenes as those of the sailors’ discovery of Enoch on the island, and his return to his former home, both of which are staged very much as in the 1911 version. The device of taking the intertitles from Tennyson has some interesting results: when Alfred Paget as Enoch proposes to Lillian Gish as Annie the scene is played without titles, simply because it’s not described in the poem. At times Cabanne’s interpretation of a scene seems slightly at odds with that offered in the titles. When Lillian consults the Bible for an answer to her dilemma, the sense of the scene matches that in the poem, but Cabanne condenses the action so that what we see on the screen seems to clash with what we read in the titles. And midway through the last reel we are informed that Lillian has become fully reconciled to her second marriage to Wallace Reid, but Cabanne allows Reid to worry about it until the very last scene in the film."

"Roberta Pearson has analyzed Griffith’s 1908 and 1911 versions of this story in detail, comparing the acting in both films and distinguishing between “histrionic” and “verisimilar” styles. In general she finds that Griffith tends towards the latter by 1911, encouraging his cast to adopt more restrained gestures and expressions, and helping them out by conveying narrative information himself through props and editing. In general, we can say that the 1915 version reflects the same trend. By and large, the acting of the three principals is subtle enough that when Paget, in the tavern near film’s end, delivers a gestural soliloquy about his changed appearance – an action that would not have seemed out of place during most of the Biograph years – it seems jarring by its contrast with the general tone of the film."

"The prize performance here is that of Lillian Gish as Annie Lee. Enoch Arden was produced immediately after The Birth of a Nation, and displays, perhaps even more prominently than that film, the promise of the sensitive, thoughtful actress Lillian Gish would become in just a few short years. In Enoch Arden her character ages two decades, a process convincingly conveyed through acting far more than make-up. Her painful indecision in the last two reels, agonizing over whether to accept Reid’s marriage proposal or cling to the dwindling hope of Paget’s return, is just the kind of dilemma she would portray so well throughout her career. Admittedly, she benefits from the increased length of the film. Linda Arvidson, playing Annie in the 1911 version, is required to submit to her persistent suitor in one shot; Lillian, in 1915, holds Reid off for the better part of a reel, a luxury that would have been impossible in the earlier versions. But even allowing for such advantages, Lillian’s future acting accomplishments are unmistakably announced here. When she holds her sickly baby in an early scene, fearing for its life, and later when the baby dies, it’s difficult not to think of Way Down East."

"As a 1915 version of a story that had already been produced twice at Biograph, Enoch Arden offers a useful index to the rapidly changing conditions of film production during these vital years: it’s produced on a far more lavish scale than the Biograph versions, but would itself have seemed quite modest within a few years. In the shipwreck scene an actual sinking ship was beyond the means of Biograph (or Majestic), but here Cabanne is able to give us the rocking, partially submerged interior of the boat. The passage of time on the island is cleverly suggested by placing Paget on the beach next to some little imitation palm trees, and later situating him among fuller vegetation. The most elaborate setting is the exterior of the village square, with a working windmill at the rear, a church on one side, and a tavern on the other. When Paget returns at the end, the passage of time is again suggested by tall weeds and fuller vegetation, and the faded sign of the “King Henry Inn”."

"Enoch Arden was reissued in 1922 with the less-than-inspired title The Fatal Marriage. Art titles, augmented with such touches as an animated tolling church bell, were added to pad the film’s length from four reels to five. (Regular attendees of the Giornate may remember that a fragment of this version was shown at the festival in 2001.) Whatever one may think of such reissues, we can be grateful for this one. A nitrate print of the 1922 edition, combined with authentic 1915 intertitles from a 28 mm original, provided the source material from which George Eastman House produced their gorgeous restoration print." – J. B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 514]