I did not visit the screening which overlapped with Fuori Quadro at Teatro Zancanaro, but I include Russell Merritt's introduction to keep a complete run of the Griffith Project 8 program notes.
This is not D. W. Griffith's The Painted Lady (Biograph, 1912).
THE PAINTED LADY (Majestic Motion Picture Co., US 1914)
Dir.: Frederick Sullivan; supv.: D. W. Griffith ; cast: Dorothy Gish, Blanche Sweet, W. E. Lawrence; 16 mm, 296 ft (incomplete: rl. 1 of 2), 12’ (16 fps), George Eastman House.
English intertitles.
Grand piano: Costas Fotopoulos.
Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 12 Oct 2004
Russell Merritt [DWG Project # 511]: "When a restless country girl leaves home to find work in the city, her older sister trails her to keep her out of trouble – only to find she is nearly too late. A local Lothario has plied the naïve youngster with liquor and has set her up as his mistress. In order to expose his faithlessness, the older sister vamps the fellow in a restaurant and has him write a note breaking off his affair with her sister (“Let this end it – Am tired of it all”). She then allows herself to be lured to his apartment where the younger sister has been ordered to hide. When the man demands sex at gunpoint, the older sister shoots him and places his note by his body. The police interpret this as a suicide note and the sisters are permitted to leave the city for home and mother."
"Only a one-reel fragment of the 1914 The Painted Lady survives, but it’s enough to confirm that despite Blanche Sweet’s appearance, this painted lady has only the vaguest similarity to its famous Biograph namesake. It might be considered a variation on the original theme, or more precisely a riff on its prototypal plot. What would have happened had the original painted lady never met her false lover, had stayed sane, and had lived to bury her father and look after her feather-brained younger sister? According to this version, she would have saved her sister from her false lover by pretending to be a painted lady, disguising herself to expose the fickleness of the cheat, and in so doing shoot him in order to fend off sexual assault. Hence, no insanity, no reliving the past, in fact no consequences whatever for either sister. According to the plot summary, the police rule the false lover’s death a suicide, and both Dorothy and Blanche are off the hook."
"But to look for comparisons between the two Painted Ladies is a stretch, and an unkindness to Majestic’s two-reeler. As a varation of the Griffith Biograph, the film has been drained of everything that gave original interest, recycling the far more conventional theme of one sister saving another from a romantic folly by seducing the would-be lover, thereby demonstrating his unworthiness. As we have seen, this was a Biograph staple formula, and would also be recycled in the Reliance and Triangle programmers."
"Donald Crisp had been directing bread-and-butter two- and three-reel Majestic programmers while acting in Griffith features ever since his arrival in Los Angeles in February 1914. There is no direct evidence that Griffith’s involvement in the production was anything more than cursory, though as I argued in my study of Griffith at Triangle (“The Griffith Third”, 1988), Griffith made a particular point of looking in on productions featuring his inner circle of protégés, even in the midst of shooting The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance."
"The surviving reel of The Painted Lady has all the earmarks of a routine programmer, although what we’re seeing is no more than two-thirds of the film in somewhat mutilated form. So, we see the original encounter between the naïve Dorothy and city slicker W.E. Lawrence in her hometown, but we miss their assignation in the city where he plies her with liquor and she becomes his well-kept mistress. Except for a closing shot showing Dorothy and Blanche leaving for the country, our fragment ends with Blanche getting Lawrence to write his fateful “Dear Jane” note in the restaurant. But this scene too exists only in skeleton form. In its original release, the film’s opening sequences were apparently longer too, judging from the Moving Picture World review: “The first reel lingers a little and the picture’s whole meaning and object is accomplished in the second which shows how the other sister accomplishes her purpose…. In the first reel there are several places where one notices Griffith mannerisms (whether he made it or not) and these, seen so often, weaken it; but at the climax, Blanche Sweet’s acting is mighty fine.”"
"What these overly familiar Griffith mannerisms were is unclear, because the current version moves so quickly. The expository scenes, featuring Blanche dumping Dorothy out of the hammock, are anything but mannered. But we have no way of knowing what has been cut out. Regardless, the MPW reviewer goes on to praise the scenes missing from the surviving print: “In [the second reel], there is much of the unexpected (it is bold and convincing) and much that is powerfully dramatic and the close gets hold of real life in a strong-souled way that is commendable.” It is tempting to wonder whether the finale, marked by Sweet’s “bold and convincing” performance and a dramatic turn that “gets hold of real life”, doesn’t include her reaction to the murder of the false lover, building on Sweet’s astonishing turn in the original Painted Lady. At all events, the performances are what captured the trade critics’ attention. “At the climax”, The Moving Picture World wrote, “Blanche Sweet’s acting is mighty fine. ” The New York Dramatic Mirror concurred: “It is principally in the artistic work of the two actresses, Dorothy Gish and Blanche Sweet, that the play holds the absorbing interest that it does – not to detract from the value of an exceedingly good plot. It is not an exaggeration to pronounce this one of the best, and surely the strongest of recent two-reel features.” – Russell Merritt [DWG Project # 511]
This is not D. W. Griffith's The Painted Lady (Biograph, 1912).
THE PAINTED LADY (Majestic Motion Picture Co., US 1914)
Dir.: Frederick Sullivan; supv.: D. W. Griffith ; cast: Dorothy Gish, Blanche Sweet, W. E. Lawrence; 16 mm, 296 ft (incomplete: rl. 1 of 2), 12’ (16 fps), George Eastman House.
English intertitles.
Grand piano: Costas Fotopoulos.
Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): The Griffith Project 8, 12 Oct 2004
Russell Merritt [DWG Project # 511]: "When a restless country girl leaves home to find work in the city, her older sister trails her to keep her out of trouble – only to find she is nearly too late. A local Lothario has plied the naïve youngster with liquor and has set her up as his mistress. In order to expose his faithlessness, the older sister vamps the fellow in a restaurant and has him write a note breaking off his affair with her sister (“Let this end it – Am tired of it all”). She then allows herself to be lured to his apartment where the younger sister has been ordered to hide. When the man demands sex at gunpoint, the older sister shoots him and places his note by his body. The police interpret this as a suicide note and the sisters are permitted to leave the city for home and mother."
"Only a one-reel fragment of the 1914 The Painted Lady survives, but it’s enough to confirm that despite Blanche Sweet’s appearance, this painted lady has only the vaguest similarity to its famous Biograph namesake. It might be considered a variation on the original theme, or more precisely a riff on its prototypal plot. What would have happened had the original painted lady never met her false lover, had stayed sane, and had lived to bury her father and look after her feather-brained younger sister? According to this version, she would have saved her sister from her false lover by pretending to be a painted lady, disguising herself to expose the fickleness of the cheat, and in so doing shoot him in order to fend off sexual assault. Hence, no insanity, no reliving the past, in fact no consequences whatever for either sister. According to the plot summary, the police rule the false lover’s death a suicide, and both Dorothy and Blanche are off the hook."
"But to look for comparisons between the two Painted Ladies is a stretch, and an unkindness to Majestic’s two-reeler. As a varation of the Griffith Biograph, the film has been drained of everything that gave original interest, recycling the far more conventional theme of one sister saving another from a romantic folly by seducing the would-be lover, thereby demonstrating his unworthiness. As we have seen, this was a Biograph staple formula, and would also be recycled in the Reliance and Triangle programmers."
"Donald Crisp had been directing bread-and-butter two- and three-reel Majestic programmers while acting in Griffith features ever since his arrival in Los Angeles in February 1914. There is no direct evidence that Griffith’s involvement in the production was anything more than cursory, though as I argued in my study of Griffith at Triangle (“The Griffith Third”, 1988), Griffith made a particular point of looking in on productions featuring his inner circle of protégés, even in the midst of shooting The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance."
"The surviving reel of The Painted Lady has all the earmarks of a routine programmer, although what we’re seeing is no more than two-thirds of the film in somewhat mutilated form. So, we see the original encounter between the naïve Dorothy and city slicker W.E. Lawrence in her hometown, but we miss their assignation in the city where he plies her with liquor and she becomes his well-kept mistress. Except for a closing shot showing Dorothy and Blanche leaving for the country, our fragment ends with Blanche getting Lawrence to write his fateful “Dear Jane” note in the restaurant. But this scene too exists only in skeleton form. In its original release, the film’s opening sequences were apparently longer too, judging from the Moving Picture World review: “The first reel lingers a little and the picture’s whole meaning and object is accomplished in the second which shows how the other sister accomplishes her purpose…. In the first reel there are several places where one notices Griffith mannerisms (whether he made it or not) and these, seen so often, weaken it; but at the climax, Blanche Sweet’s acting is mighty fine.”"
"What these overly familiar Griffith mannerisms were is unclear, because the current version moves so quickly. The expository scenes, featuring Blanche dumping Dorothy out of the hammock, are anything but mannered. But we have no way of knowing what has been cut out. Regardless, the MPW reviewer goes on to praise the scenes missing from the surviving print: “In [the second reel], there is much of the unexpected (it is bold and convincing) and much that is powerfully dramatic and the close gets hold of real life in a strong-souled way that is commendable.” It is tempting to wonder whether the finale, marked by Sweet’s “bold and convincing” performance and a dramatic turn that “gets hold of real life”, doesn’t include her reaction to the murder of the false lover, building on Sweet’s astonishing turn in the original Painted Lady. At all events, the performances are what captured the trade critics’ attention. “At the climax”, The Moving Picture World wrote, “Blanche Sweet’s acting is mighty fine. ” The New York Dramatic Mirror concurred: “It is principally in the artistic work of the two actresses, Dorothy Gish and Blanche Sweet, that the play holds the absorbing interest that it does – not to detract from the value of an exceedingly good plot. It is not an exaggeration to pronounce this one of the best, and surely the strongest of recent two-reel features.” – Russell Merritt [DWG Project # 511]
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