The Old Man and Jim

Ulysses Davis: The Old Man and Jim (1911). Photo from IMDb.

THE OLD MAN AND JIM (Champion, US 1911)
    Dir: Ulysses Davis; adapted “from J. Whitcomb Riley’s great war poem”.
    MPW date: 18 Feb 1911
    35 mm, 976 ft /16 fps/ 17 min, George Eastman House.
    Grand piano: David Drazin.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fort Lee, 13 Oct 2004.

Richard Koszarski (GCM): "The Old Man and Jim was produced at almost the same time as D. W. Griffith’s better known Fort Lee production, The Battle. But while the Biograph Company took over a large plot of ground at Hammett’s Hill, within walking distance from the Champion studio on Fifth Street, Mark Dintenfass and his director, Ulysses Davis, shot all of their Civil War epic on an open-air stage, including several preposterous “exteriors.” Why? Champion certainly took their cameras out into the neighborhood for many other productions. Was it because they insisted on making good use of what was still the only proper studio in Fort Lee, while Griffith and the rest of the competition were still changing in hotel rooms and filming in the woods? It would seem that Griffith had little to learn from Ulysses Davis – except, perhaps, for that gruesome “Liberty and Her Sons” tableau at the conclusion." – Richard Koszarski (GCM)

AA: Civil War tableaux. Primitive.

The Moving Picture News: "The "old man" never had much to say excepting to Jim, and Jim was the wildest boy he had. The old man knew and so did everybody in the town, including the lady's own husband, that Jim loved his neighbor's wife. But Jim didn't care, and the old man was so completely wrapped up in him that he closed his eyes to the wildness of the lad. Nine sons, and Jim was the wildest of them all. Then came news of the war that was soon to break forth between North and South. And the inevitable happened. The lady's husband saw Jim attempt to kiss his wife, and she permitted him to try. A row that resulted in a disgraceful fight was precipitated, and while the husband lay stunned and bleeding upon the floor, the news was thrown like a bomb upon the excited crowd in the room. "The war has broken out." The war, that terrible, but necessary slaughter of brave men, was begun, and Jim was the first to go. Some wagging tongues suggested that he had to go to escape the result of his terrible deed. However, "Cap." Bigler soon wrote back that Jim was the bravest man in the whole regiment, white or black. That his fighting is as good as his farming was bad, and he's carried the old flag through the bloodiest fight that ever was. The old man worded a letter to Jim and Jim read it to the boys. It said, "Good-bye, Jim, take care o' yourself." Then came the battle of Petersburg, General Grant commanding. The boys in grey lay behind their entrenchment and literally mowed down the lads in blue. Then the spark leapt into Jim's soul. For he dashed with his own men right up to the enemy's cannon, took them, pointed them the other way, and socked it home to the boys in grey, as they hurried for timber, on, and on, Jim, a lieutenant, with one arm gone. No battle in these terrible times was fiercer. None had deadlier results. Upon a heap of piled up corpses, grey and blue, brothers, dead, as once in life, wounded unto death, with the dear beloved flag held tightly in his hand, lay our hero, Jim. While his life-blood ebbed away, then appeared to him a vision of the first great father of liberty, George Washington, and by his side stood the father of emancipation, Abraham Lincoln, for whom Jim lay there dying, and between those two great fighters for freedom stands Liberty herself, resplendent in her robes of freedom. Blessing the stricken boy, the vision fades, and Jim with an effort rises to his feet, climbs to the top of the dead and, waving the beloved flag he calls to them to awaken and come on to battle. Furiously waving the tattered flag, he falls back into the arms of General Grant, and some of his aides. Think of a private like Jim, who has climbed up to the shoulder straps. Think of him with the war all through and a glorious old red, white and blue, covering him.
    —The Moving Picture News (Quoted in Internet Movie Database)