Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (two blu-rays: The Criterion Collection 2024 and Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series 2024)

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). On Christmas Eve in a London slum in a desolate garret under a broken window Lulu (Louise Brooks) lights a candle and picks up the mistletoe. They have been bestowed on Jack the Ripper by a compassionate maid of the Salvation Army whose brass band plays Christmas carols during the finale. Photo from IMDb. Please click on the image to expand it.

Die Büchse der Pandora. Variationen auf das Thema Frank Wedekinds "Lulu" / Pandoran lipas / Pandoras ask.

    DE 1929. Nero-Film AG (Berliini). Copyright: Praesens-Film AG. P: Seymour Nebenzahl.

    D: G. W. Pabst. Ass D: Mark Sorkin, Paul Falkenberg. SC: Ladislaus Vajda – based on the tragedies Erdgeist (Maahinen, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandoran lipas, 1902) by Frank Wedekind . DP: Günther Krampf – panchromatic emulsion – 1:1,33 – b&w – silent – 8 Akte – 3255 m /20 fps, 19 fps/. AD: Andrej Andrejew, Bohumil Heš. Photos: Hans Casparius.

    C: Louise Brooks (Lulu), Fritz Kortner (Dr. Ludwig Schön), Franz Lederer (Alwa Schön), Carl Goetz (Schigolch), Krafft-Raschig (Rodrigo Quast), Alice Roberts (Countess Geschwitz), Daisy d’Ora (Dr. Schön's fiancée), Gustav Diessl (Jack the Ripper), Michael von Newlinski (Marquis Casti-Piani), Siegfried Arno (stage manager).

    German intertitles

    1929: 3255 m /20 fps/ 141 min, /19 fps/ 149 min

    1998 (Bologna, La Cinémathèque française): 3018 m /20 fps/ 132 min

    2009: 3068 m /20 fps/ 133 min, /19 fps/ 141 min

    Uraufführung 9.2.1929 Gloria-Palast, Berlin – banned in Finland 20.3.1929 – first screened at the Finnish Film Archive 13.3.1962 – first Finnish telecast Yle TV2 17.7.1984.

    Reconstruction and restoration: 

Analogue reconstruction-in-progress Filmmuseum – Münchner Stadtmuseum (Munich 1997).

Digital restoration Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin 2009). 3068 m

This 2K restoration was created from three duplicate elements from the collections of the Cinémathèque française, Gosfilmofond and Národni filmový archiv. Funded by Hugh M. Hefner, this restoration was a collaboration between the George Eastman Museum, La Cinémathèque française, Národni filmový archiv, Gosfilmofond and the Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen. Restoration supervisor: Martin Koerber. Restoration: Haghefilm Conservation BV, Amsterdam.

    Blu-rays viewed and Alban Berg's opera Lulu listened to at home in preparation to my lecture "Weimar Cinema / Pandora's Box" at Aalto University, Department of Film, Marsio, Otakaari 2, 30 Oct 2024

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). The 2024 edition of The Criterion Collection. Lulu (Louise Brooks) in funeral dress after the death of Ludwig Schön on their wedding night. Cover art: Eric Skillman. Photo: Hans Casparius.

Blu-ray special edition features:

New 2K digital restoration

Four musical scores, by Gillian Anderson, Dimitar Pentchev, Peer Raben, and Stéphan Oliva

Audio commentary (2005) by film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane

Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (1998), a documentary by Hugh Munro Neely

Lulu in Berlin (1971), a rare interview with actor Louise Brooks, by Richard Leacock and Susan Steinberg Woll

Interviews with Leacock and Michael Pabst (2006), director G. W. Pabst’s son

PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman (2006), notes on the scores, Kenneth Tynan’s 1979 “The Girl in the Black Helmet,” and an article by Brooks on her relationship with Pabst (1965).

Optional English subtitles

Region: A

3068 m /19 fps/ 141 min

G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). The 2024 edition of Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series. Cover art: Tony Stella.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition Box Set - 3000 Copies

Limited Edition Hardcase featuring artwork by Tony Stella

Limited Edition 60-Page Book featuring new writing on the film by critics Alexandra Heller Nicholas, Imogen Sara Smith, and Richard Combs; alongside archival stills and imagery

1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a definitive 2K digital restoration

Orchestral Score by Peer Raben

New audio commentary by critic Pamela Hutchinson

New visual appreciation by author and critic Kat Ellinger

New video essay by David Cairns

New video essay by Fiona Watson

Optional English subtitles

Region: B

3068 m /20 fps/ 133 min

Alban Berg: Lulu (posthumous 1935 / premiered in two acts 1937 / complete in three acts 1979). Orchestration of the third act completed by Friedrich Cerha. The first recording of the complete opera: Deutsche Grammophon 1979 - Teresa Stratas (Lulu) / Franz Mazura (Dr. Schön) / Kenneth Riegel (Alwa Schön) / Yvonne Minton (Countess Geschwitz) - conductor: Pierre Boulez - Opéra de Paris. 3-CD Box Set with a booklet of 222 pages, libretto in German and English, 2000.

AA: It was a thrill to see the 2009 restoration of Pandora's Box for the first time. That restoration has been around all these years, but because I saw in Pordenone in 2007 the previous restoration at the closing gala, and the following year we screened that version in Helsinki ourselves, I felt no urgency to revisit the movie sooner.

I have been mesmerized by Pandora's Box since I saw it for the first time in 1981 at the Filmklubben / Filmstaden / Svenska Filminstitutet in Stockholm. The duration was 150 min, probably because it was presumably screened at 16 fps, and if that was the case, the length of the version must have been around 2770 m.

In all versions the distinction is the timeless presence of Louise Brooks as Lulu. G. W. Pabst had never met her before the filming started, but he knew she was right by her presence in A Girl in Every Port. Still today Louise Brooks is original and unique, a model for countless homages, imitations and influences, but only the exterior can be imitated.

Henri Langlois said that like sculptures of classical Antiquity still project the grandeur of the spirit of the age, Pandora's Box is capable of doing so in the coming millennia.

A key to this is how Louise Brooks transcends conventional sex and gender roles and received notions of identity. Words like "sexual ambivalence" and "bisexuality" have been evoked, but now I feel that she goes beyond even them, to an earlier, more original dimension of identity. Brooks said that she never acted sexy and never thought being sexy, not even while having sex. She was not self-conscious about sex. She was simply being herself.

Lotte H. Eisner, who had met Louise Brooks in Berlin when she was filming with Pabst (and reading Schopenhauer during a break), was the first to give full credit to her presence. That happened in Chapter XVIII "Pabst et le miracle de Louise Brooks" in L'Écran démoniaque (1952) which was translated into English as The Haunted Screen. 

Soon after at the "60 Years of Cinema" exhibition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1955 there were "two gigantic portraits looming down from wires in positions of co-equal honor" (Barry Paris): Falconetti in The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc and Brooks in Pandora's Box. Since then, Pandora's Box has become a banner film of the 1920s - although it failed during its original run and was censored and cut - even banned in countries like Finland. But since the 1950s its status has kept growing, and it has even become a symbol for cinema itself.

Peter Graham (1939-2020): A Dictionary of the Cinema. A. Zwemmer Limited (London) / A. S. Barnes & Co. (New York), Tantivy Press, 1964. Probably my first film book. Photo: Lulu (Louise Brooks) examines the biceps of Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig) in G. W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (DE 1929). Photo: Hans Casparius.

Watching the restoration on the Criterion and Eureka blu-rays the Pandora experience turns even more profound than before. Because I hadn't seen the movie in 16 years I cannot reliably compare, but the film feels like new although there is probably nothing new storywise.

Martin Koerber, who was in charge of the restoration, has stressed how particular G. W. Pabst was with the editing. Pabst conducted the editing himself, although on some prints and copies others get credit. For Pabst, every frame counted, and the distinction in this restoration is that now every frame counts again. This was only possible to achieve by digital means. There are no original sources, and the restoration had to happen from duped and battered materials. The smoothness of the transitions and the consistent quality in the definition of light are impressive.

I love to disagree with Siegfried Kracauer on almost every page of From Caligari to Hitler. He fails utterly to comprehend Pandora's Box for starters, yet his discourse is unmissable on Pabst. Here he assesses Pabst's aesthetics of invisible cutting (in contrast to the confrontational and discontinuous montage of the Soviet school): "Pabst departs from them technically, because he ventures into the indefinite world of facts. His insistence upon cutting results from his keen concern with given reality. He utilizes tiny pictorial particles to capture the slightest impressions, and he fuses these particles into a finespun texture to mirror reality as a continuity".

Pabst has been with reason linked with New Objectivity, and his undeniable influences from Expressionism have been registered. But inspired by Kracauer's observation of Pabst utilizing "tiny pictorial particles to capture the slightest impressions" I also feel that Pabst has been influenced by Impressionism. Pabst is fascinated by the fleeting moment, and he takes trouble in covering minutiae. This restoration helps us appreciate this dimension better.

This time I registered how different all eight acts of Pandora's Box are. Each has a different imagery: - Lulu's apartment - Schön's apartment - Backstage - the Wedding - the Trial - the Night Train - the Ship of Gamblers - the London Fog. The movie is a showcase of the full range of the visual mastery of late silent cinema, Weimar cinema and G. W. Pabst.

...

PANDORA'S SECRET

There is a secret in Pandora's Box. In thrall of Louise Brooks, I did not get it at first sight, and in 1995, when I published the first edition of my MMM Film Guide, I still missed it, but in 2005 in the second edition I registered it.

It is implicit in Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays and Alban Berg's opera Lulu. I don't remember how it appears in Leopold Jessner's Earth Spirit.

In Pabst's film it is made explicit in heartbreaking intertitles. Lulu refers to Schigolch: "Er ist mein erster... Mäzen" ("He is my first... patron") and "Er ist mein Vater" ("He is my father").

Pabst has the tendency of turning the main clause into a subclause. It is part of his general drive to introduce an offbeat, unexpected and even contradictory approach into the fabula. For example whenever he employs a genre or a style, he executes it against the grain. 

Pandora's Box is an incest tragedy. However, not told in terms of dramatic emphasis but in the cool detachment of New Objectivity. There are also affinities with the Distancing Effect (Verfremdungseffekt / V-Effekt) of Bertolt Brecht and the Defamiliarization (Ostraneniya) of Russian Formalists such as Viktor Shklovsky.

The most tender sequence of the film is the finale with Jack the Ripper. "It is Christmas Eve, and she is about to receive the gift that has been her dream since childhood: death by a sexual maniac" (Louise Brooks). For Brooks, the only disappointment was that the knife did not hit the vagina.

Louise Brooks was born on 14 November 1906. At age 9, around 1915-1916, she lived in Cherryvale, Kansas. 40 years later Louise's childhood friend Betty sent her a photograph where Louise was together with Mr. Flowers. He was nice to little girls and offered them popcorn. Brooks had forgotten all about it, but now she remembered. One day Louise knocked on his door to ask for more. "I was done in by a middle aged man when I was nine", she wrote to Herman G. Weinberg. She also told Kenneth Tynan that "I was loused up by my Lolita experiences". At the time, Louise also told her mother. She put the blame on Louise for "leading him on".

For Barry Paris in his magnificent 609-page Louise Brooks biography, Mr. Flowers is the "Rosebud" of the star's life.

The insult to the injury is also already implicit in Hesiod's telling of the myth of Pandora's Box from which all the evils were unleashed into the world. There is a parallel to the myth of the Garden of Eden where Eve is the one who eats the forbidden fruit and gives some to the man, and consequently God expels them from Paradise.

D. W. Griffith: Betrayed by a Handprint (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

 

D. W. Griffith: Betrayed by a Handprint (US 1908). Florence Lawrence (Myrtle Vane).

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin, Billy Bitzer. Cast: Florence Lawrence, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt, Linda Arvidson, Mack Sennett. 

    Filmed: 6.8, 19.8.1908 (NY Studio). Rel: 1.9.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 14'49" (from paper print, 833 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: José Maria Serralde Ruiz..

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 9 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "Here is a detective film with no detective. Yet we know who the culprit is from the start. In fact, we get to see lovely and desperate Florence Lawrence commit the crime. We discover, by way of two close-up cut-in shots, both how she hid the jewels and how her identity was uncovered by the victim. In The Griffith Project, Vol. 1 (pp. 103-104), Tom Gunning notes these insert shots are isolated from their setting by a pitchblack background, arguing that each serves an explanatory purpose, but not a dramatic one."

"Still, Griffith is effectively moving his characters through and about contiguous spaces. The audience has a clear sense of the layout, and the dangerous distance Lawrence has to travel across the second-floor exterior ledge. Soon he will move his actors, like frightened chess pieces, through a series of telescoping rooms as danger threatens. But for now he is learning the rudiments of manipulating his tight little spaces (most, of necessity, the size of the Biograph stage.)"

Tom Gunning (GCM 1997): " A fascinating early detective film, in which both the methods and the detection of a crime are detailed. Rather than further exploring the devices off parallel editing that Griffith had just begun to make use of this film relies on editing between contiguous spaces bridged by simple actions." (DWG Project # 46)

AA: Memorable images: the dynamic blocking in the opening scene of the bridge party with 11 characters. The jolt experienced by Myrtle Vane (Florence Lawrence) as she loses everything. Her midnight journey in pyjamas on the dangerous ledge to steal Mrs. Wharton's (Kate Bruce) diamonds. The pre-Langian impact of the two handprints (qf. the giant fingerprint enlargement in M). There are elements of a true thriller, but all in all the performance resembles too much a Sunday school play or a Kindergarten play. The pantomime, the language of gestures, is not always convincing.

...

I saw Betrayed by a Handprint in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 46), pomeriggio 14 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 330 ft /15 fps/ 14 min without intertitles and Ulrich Rügner at the piano.

...

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 166, September 1908: "The art of palmistry is decried and we may say tabooed by many, still we must admit that it at times has its use, as this Biograph subject will show."

"While spending the night at wealthy widow Wharton's home, Myrtle steals a pearl necklace and cleverly hides the loot. Little does she know the widow knows a thing or two about fingerprinting."

"Dashing widow Mrs. Wharton gives a party at her beautiful villa in honor of the presentation to her of a handsome diamond necklace by her fiancé, during the evening bridge party participated in by a number of the guests. "

"One, Miss Myrtle Vane, is having wretched luck and Mrs. Wharton advises her several tomes to desist, but she plays on in the vain hope of fortune's tide turning, until finally, in extreme desperation, she stakes her all--and loses. Shame and disgrace stare her in the face. What can she do to recoup her depleted fortune?"

"Another guest is eminent palmist Professor Francois Paracelsus, who of course, was called upon to read the palms of those present. Sheets of paper were prepared and each imprinted their hand on a sheet to be read by the erudite soothsayer at his leisure, so were left on the drawing room table. All have now retired to the apartments assigned them by Mrs. Wharton, but there seems to be a sleepless night before Myrtle, and she suffers mental agony until the thought of the necklace flashes before her mind's eye--if she only possessed those treasures all would be well. "

"The more she thought of it the more unconquerable became her covetousness, until the inimitable determination to secure them seized her, but how? To enter her room by the door would not only arouse the hostess, but maybe the guests as well. "

"There was but one way, by the window, and this undertaking was decidedly hazardous, for it meant that she must crawl along the narrow ledge between her window and that of Mrs. Wharton, a distance of 20 feet, and one slight misstep would result in her being dashed to death on the walk below. "

"But she makes the trip without mishap, and entering the room she searches noiselessly for the top of the dresser, finds it, secures the necklace, and makes her way back to her apartment. Now to hide the jewels. An ingenious idea strikes her. She cuts in two a bar of soap, and hollowing it out, places the treasure inside and joins the parts together. "

"Meanwhile Mrs. Wharton, aroused from her slumber, intuitively looks to her diamonds, but finds them gone. "What's this? A clue!" On the dresser there is a sheet of the palmister's paper on which there is a handprint of dust. Down to the drawing room for the corresponding imprint. There it is, and signed "Myrtle Vane." "

"To Miss Vane's room goes the furious Mrs. Wharton, and during the scene that transpires the soap is brushed from the table and breaks open, exposing the necklace, at the same time convicting the poor girl."

"Upon the recovery of her jewels, Mrs. Wharton's anger subsides and she is inclined to be charitable towards the unfortunate girl kneeling at her feet, so she not only forgives her, but insists upon aiding her financially."  —Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 166, September 1908

The Pride of the Clan (2024 restoration in progress, David Pierce for the Mary Pickford Foundation)

Maurice Tourneur directs Mary Pickford in The Pride of the Clan (US 1917). Photo: Mary Pickford Foundation / Marc Wanamaker – Bison Archives.          

Den sista av sin ätt.

Working titles: The Lass of Killean; The Reeds of the Clan.

    US 1917 Mary Pickford Film Corporation. Dist: Artcraft Pictures Corporation. 

    Dir: Maurice Tourneur. Scen, adapt: Elaine Stern[e] [Carrington], Charles E. Whittaker. Photog: John van den Broek, Lucien Andriot; [asst. Charles Van Enger]. Des: Ben Carré (scenery). Ed: Clarence Brown.

    Cast: Mary Pickford (Marget MacTavish), Matt Moore (Jamie Campbell), Warren Cook (Robert, Earl of Dunstable), Kathryn Browne Decker (Countess of Dunstable), Ed Roseman (David Pitcairn), Joel Day (The Dominie), [Leatrice Joy (extra)].

    Loc: Marblehead (Massachusetts).

    Première: 1.7.1917 (Strand Theatre, NY). Rel: 8.1.1917. Copy: DCP (2K), 87' (from 35 mm pos. acet., 4100 ft, + 16 mm pos., 2800 ft [7 rls.], 19 fps); titles: ENG. Source: The Mary Pickford Foundation, Los Angeles.

    First preserved 1956 by the Library of Congress as a 16 mm master positive from Pickford’s nitrate camera negative; new 35 mm safety master positive created by the Mary Pickford Company in the 1960s; 16 mm edition created 1970 by David Shepard using both sources.

    Restoration in progress; narrative assembly prepared 2024 by David Pierce for the Mary Pickford Foundation using scans provided by the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone 2024: Ben Carré. 

    Musical commentary: Donald Sosin, Elisabeth-Jane Baldry. 

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 8 Oct 2024

Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec (GCM 2024): "Kevin Brownlow, in Mary Pickford Rediscovered (1999), sets the scene: “Originally entitled The Lass of Killean, it was the first of two productions for Mary Pickford that Maurice Tourneur was obliged to make when he signed with Artcraft. … Shot on location in Marblehead, this film had a remarkable authentic look. … [Tourneur] brought to his pictures a sense of composition and lighting so striking that you can recognize a Tourneur film by a single frame. The story of Scottish fisherfolk provided him with his favorite elements – sea, storms, birds, boats – and he made a richly atmospheric production. … Tourneur makes no attempt to glamorize the characters with makeup or lighting. The little community, with its low thatched cabins, the pigs and geese wandering in the street, has a documentary reality. … The art director was Ben Carré, … whose attitude towards his craft was revolutionary. … The Pride of the Clan looks so authentic it might have been made in Scotland.”"

"In 1916 it was not common for a Fort Lee production to mount a full expedition to a distant location for extended shooting, but such was the case for the making of The Pride of the Clan. An open touring car was hired, with cameraman John van den Broek in the front seat next to the driver, and Maurice Tourneur and production manager Sam Mayer in the back seat with Ben Carré sandwiched between them. Off they went to scout the ocean coastline of New England from Connecticut to Maine, at which point they boarded a night train in Portland to return to Fort Lee."

"En route they stopped in Salem, Massachusetts. There they hired another car to take them to the small coastal village of Marblehead, and it was here that they found what would become the location for Killean, their story’s Scottish fishing village. It was on a rocky peninsula, Marblehead Neck, just east of the central village, that all the exterior sets were built, requiring a large amount of experienced crew and logistical support. “I had to requisition everyone, stagehands, carpenters, propmen, painters, and electricians,” Ben recalled. “I was very enthusiastic about the possibilities; I could build a village street leading to the rocky promontory dominating the view of the ocean. There below was a cove where Mary Pickford’s 40-foot boat would be beached.” According to reports, the film crew was there for 5-6 weeks."

"Drama wasn’t always scripted. On Sunday 12 November 1916, there was a near-tragedy. The old fishing schooner that had been towed out to sea to film some key scenes, containing Pickford, Tourneur, several cast members, and the cameramen, sprang a leak. Two cameras were lost as the schooner went down. Almost everyone jumped and swam for their lives. But Pickford and Tourneur were still on board; he saved her after a wave knocked her down, and they were lucky to escape with their lives. Crowds of spectators watched the filming daily; they witnessed the drama from the shore, and it was reported in Moving Picture World (2.12.1916). The company had to return for retakes."

"Pickford’s fans flocked to see the film when it opened in New York in January 1917, eager to see their favorite as a feisty Scottish lass who becomes chieftain of a clan. Variety (5.1.1917) enumerated the film’s strengths: “[It] is marked by many incidental details, which perhaps are not essential to the tale itself, but enrich the picture and go to the building of atmosphere. There is nothing sensational about the offering, but it has the strength of simplicity in the telling and picturesqueness of locals and character types. … The kirk of the village is made the centre of an interesting series of character scenes, the religious life of the community supplies good genre studies, [and] the local customs are worked nicely into the betrothal and courting scenes…” Local color is also added by lavish helpings of Scots dialect in the artwork intertitles."

"In her autobiography (Sunshine and Shadow, 1956) Pickford dismissed the film as a “disastrous failure,” recounting her close call. Brownlow notes that “Mary had forgotten one review [from Exhibitors Trade Review, 13.1.1917], which stated, ‘There is every possibility that the versatility she exhibits throughout the production will cause it to be listed by critics as the best film in which she appeared during her extraordinarily successful career as a star of silent drama.’” Following a screening in 1969, Richard Koszarski wrote in Film Quarterly (Winter 1969-1970, “Lost Films from the National Film Collection”): “Tourneur’s eye for composition is flawless, equaling or surpassing Griffith’s work of the same period, and the performances are more restrained than in much of Intolerance. Clearly this film was ten years ahead of its time.”" – Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec (GCM 2024)

AA: The most popular film in Finland this year is Tiina Lymi's Stormskärs Maja which belongs to a current of stories of Finnish "Storm Cliff Women" usually set in the Åland archipelago. There is also an international trend of young women's Bildungsromane where the protagonist living by the sea faces extreme hardship, often losing to the sea her father / brother / husband / son, or all of them. The Pride of the Clan is Mary Pickford's contribution. (The Ur-protagonist may be Penelope).

Maurice Tourneur conveys the formidable power of the elements, substituting the North Shore of Massachusetts for Scotland. The film starts in a raging storm. The father of Margie MacTavish (Pickford), a fisherman, perishes, regardless of desperate efforts to save him. To her great shock, Margie must accept the responsibility of the chieftain of the clan. In one of the most stirring moments we see her literally grow to the occasion when she rises to the stand to address the community.

Like in Stormskärs Maja, religion is of particular importance when people are waging a war against the elements and facing matters of life and death every day. Secularization is gaining room also on the Island of Killean, but Margie will have none of it. Wielding a whip she guides all to the church to sustain the sense of the community. Only the loner David Pitcairn stays outside, thinking that religion is meaningless.

Marget is dating a young fisherman, Jamie Campbell, and they are engaged in a traditional ceremony. But Jamie's foster mother, originally his nurse, now reports to the true mother, the Countess of Dunstable, that Jamie is alive and that she had reported his death so that she could raise him. When the Countess returns it seems obvious that they do not want Marget to be a part of their life. Jamie objects, but Marget with the chieftain's authority declares the case is closed. She has been living in a houseboat and lets it loose. Incredibly it may seem because there is a leak and the boat starts to sink. But perhaps there is a motive that is unconscious or even conscious, although it might seem out of character for the fighter type that Marget is. David Pitcairn the curmudgeon alerts the community. Jamie races to the rescue, and everything is settled.

In this film we meet the two sides of Mary Pickford's star persona: the eternal child and the woman growing up to face the hardest facts of life. For me, Mary Pickford is one of the greatest in the history of the cinema, but she is far from being recognized as widely as she would deserve. One reason is in the promotional material. In the publicity photos, her childish side is overdone in a way that may seem dated. In the films themselves there is no such problem.

Maurice Tourneur and Ben Carré provide a rich, dense and vivid sense of life on the Scottish island. I was thinking about a prominent recent film, The Outrun, with two great talents, Nora Fingscheidt & Saoirse Ronan (as the biologist Rona), set on the Orkney but failing to fully exploit the poetic possibilities of the Scapa Flow as the oceanic reflection of Rona's inner storm. In my viewing charts it gets outrun by Pickford & Tourneur I'm afraid.

D. W. Griffith: For a Wife's Honor (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

 US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin. Cast: Charles Inslee, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt, Linda Arvidson, Arthur Johnson.

    Filmed: 28.7, 30.7.1908 (NY Studio; Fort Lee, New Jersey). Rel: 28.8.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 8'26" (from paper print, 474 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Günter Buchwald.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 8 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "This improbable little melodrama was Griffith’s twelfth release, and shows signs of the stutter-step evolution of his style. He is beginning to show the audience what is simultaneously happening in two separate spaces: an outer hallway and an inner room – with a locked door intervening. But his geography is spatially illogical. Characters in the inner room exit to screen right, but do not emerge into the contiguous area on screen left. Instead, they enter screen right, giving us a flipped view of the space. Possibly this came from the theatrical tradition. If an actor exited stage right, he would probably re-enter from the same direction. Or, Griffith might not have been empowered to direct the setup of the flats so early in his career."

"Presumably audiences were able to mentally make the adaptation, but it feels wrong. It is a mistake that we will sporadically see in future Biographs, but it will become rarer. By the time he makes The Lonely Villa in 1909, his mastery of adjoining spaces will be not only technically correct, but will be employed to effective dramatic use."

AA: An intricate storyline packed into eight and a half minutes. Like Cooper Graham, I fail to understand what the "Krameresque type" mentioned in the Biograph Bulletin means. But For a Wife's Honor has a density and a final sacrifice twist like in Boccaccio's falcon story. The film flashes by too fast to build momentum and have a truly devastating impact. Cooper Graham observes that after having progressed to his first close-up in his previous films, Griffith now retreats to long shots.

I am impressed by the fatalism of the clean composition of the interiors and the stability of the camera recording the fast moving action.

...

I saw For a Wife's Honor in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 40), mattino 14 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm /15 fps/ 8 min without intertitles and Neil Brand at the piano. I was impressed by the overdone gesticulation.

Moving Picture World synopsis from the Biograph Bulletin, No. 165, August 28 1908:  "STORY OF A TRUE FRIEND'S SACRIFICE. The Biograph in this subject presents a picture of the Krameresque type. The plot is most interesting and lucid, and the situations intensely stirring."

"Irving Robertson, a successful playwright, has just received a message from out of town to witness the initial performance of one of his plays. As he is about to leave, Henderson, the manager, calls to pay a sum due him for royalties."

"At the same time, Frank Wilson, a friend of the family, drops in. Henderson hands over to Robertson several thousand dollars and departs. He places the money temporarily in his desk and prepares for his journey, excusing himself to Wilson, at the same time begging him to make himself at home, he departs."

"Now with the family there was employed a French maid, whose carelessness just before this scene, incurred the displeasure of Mrs. Robertson, who discharged her. Wilson is a bank cashier and has fallen into the error of so many of his kind. As his peculations are detected, and well-grounded rumors already rife, he comes to ask the wise counsel of his friends. Robertson having departed, Wilson hesitatingly unburdens his mind to Mrs. Robertson, who, of course, is amazed at his recital."

"While they are engaged in whispered conversation, the maid, who has packed her belongings to leave, peeks in. An idea strikes her: a chance too good to lose, so she noiselessly reverses the key in the door and locks it from the outside, thus leaving the couple prisoners. Out of the house she rushes to overtake Robertson, which she does at the next corner. Loud and impressive are her defamations, which not only arouse the jealousy of the husband, but curiosity of the passersby as well."

"Back to the house dashes Robertson and upon finding the door locked, the maid's story seems only too true. Inside the room consternation had at first seized the couple, and then the wife accuses Wilson of duplicity: "No, no! Not that! I'm not as low as that, but we must think, and think quickly. Ah! Go into that room." The wife does as he commands and Wilson makes for the desk, bursts it open and is taking the money as Robertson, in a frenzy, crashes into the room."

"He stops short at the scene that greets his sight. There is his wife, whom he had for the moment doubted, coming from her room, and his most cherished friend standing over the wrecked desk with the implicating bank notes still in his hand. For an instant all seemed paralyzed: then from the husband: "Go." Wilson, with bowed head, leaves. He has chosen to hurl himself into the slough of degradation to save the honor of his friend's wife."—Moving Picture World synopsis from the Biograph Bulletin, No. 165, August 28 1908.

D. W. Griffith: Balked at the Altar (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

D. W. Griffith: Balked at the Altar (US 1908). Hezekiah Hornbeak, Artemisia Sophia Stebbins (Mabel Stoughton) and her father Obediah Stebbins. This screenshot found in the web does not reflect the quality of the restoration we saw.

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin. Cast: Mabel Stoughton, Arthur Johnson, George Gebhardt, Robert Harron, Linda Arvidson. 

    Filmed: 29-30.7.1908 (NY Studio; Fort Lee, New Jersey). Rel: 25.8.1908. Copy: DCP (4K), 12'30" (from paper print, 703 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG.

    Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

   Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Günter Buchwald.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 8 Oct 2024

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "This early Biograph is notable primarily for Griffith’s first use of an insert shot of an actor. It is the final shot in the film, echoing Edwin S. Porter’s use of a cowboy firing into the camera at the end of The Great Train Robbery (1903)."

"What, besides the final shot, is of interest in this 700 feet of dreck? The answer lies in Way Down East, a melodrama that originated on Broadway in 1898, but which had Broadway revivals in both 1903 and 1905. While Balked’s plot bears no relation to the wronged-woman story, a line can be drawn directly from the main characters here and the supporting characters in the play: the comic spinster, the country farmer, the rube. Griffith was to film Way Down East in 1920, but here, 12 years earlier, are the same characters. Griffith had made no progress vis-à-vis plot preference in those dozen years; but he was to progress centuries in terms of narrative form."

AA: Cooper Graham registers Balked at the Altar as Griffith's first rustic comedy. It is a crude farce in the most primitive mode of early cinema based on cardboard figures. The overdone caricatures include the Spinster, the Blackface and the Sissy. The stock situations include a shotgun proposal (see photo above) and the groom's escape from his own wedding. In the epic chase sequence the wedding crowd turns into something like a lynch mob. This was a standard comedy routine in early farce from Edwin S. Porter to André Deed until it was alchemized into gold by Keaton in Seven Chances. 

Griffith was not a master of comedy, but he was able to play subtly on the thin line between the sublime and the ridiculous. He had his own unique sense of humour, but it is not on display in Balked at the Altar.

Cooper Graham singles out the last shot where the leading lady resumes reading Three Weeks, Elinor Glyn's bestselling novel about a sex relationship lasting only the titular weeks but with everlasting consequences. It is a bust portrait shot of the lady, nothing new (Graham quotes The Irwin-Rice Kiss and the ending of The Great Train Robbery), but maybe the first close-up directed by Griffith.

The copy on display was decent - a marked improvement to what we saw in 1997.

...

I saw Balked at the Altar in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 39), mattino 14 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm /15 fps/ 12 min without intertitles and Neil Brand at the piano. The visual quality: barely visible.

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 164, August 25 1908: "BIOGRAPH COMEDY OF A NEAR-WEDDING. Artemisia Sophia Stebbins was a lovelorn maiden who had delved deep into the mysteries of "Three Weeks," as well as being conversant with the teachings of Laura Jean Libby."

"Her one hobby was to possess a hubby. Many there were whom she tried to hook, but in vain, for truth to say. Arte was of pulchritude a bit shy. She had the complexion of pale rhubarb and a figure like a wheat sack. Still her motto was "nil desperandum," and she was ever hopeful."

"One thing in her favor, her father. Obediah Stebbins, avowed his aid. Of the visitors who called at the Stebbins' domicile, Hezekiah Horubeak seemed the most probable to corral, so Artemisia set to work. Hez at first was a trifle recalcitrant, but was soon subdued by Obediah's gun, which we must admit possessed egregious powers of persuasion."

"The day for the wedding was set, and to the village church there flocked the natives to witness this momentous affair. All was progressing serenely until the all-important question was put to Hezekiah, and instead of answering "Yea," he kicked over the trace and tried to beat it."

"His escape by way of the door was intercepted, so it happens that the little church is in sore need of a stained glass window, for Hez took a portion of it with him in his haste. Out and over the lawn he gallops with the congregation at his heels, Artemisia Sophia well in the lead."

"Down from the terrace onto the road they leap and across the meadow until they come to a fence, on the other side of which are two boys shooting crap. Over this hurdle they vault coming plump down on the poor boys, almost crushing the life out of them. Regaining his equilibrium, Hez forges on coming to the very acropolis of the town. The descent therefrom is decidedly precipitous and makes Hez hesitate for a moment, but only a moment, for the howling horde is still in pursuit, so down be goes in leaps and falls to the bottom, followed by a veritable avalanche of human beings."

"Owing to this mix-up Hez has a chance to distance them a little, and being almost exhausted, he attempts to climb a tree, but too late for the gang is soon upon him, and carry him back to the church where the ceremony is started again, and when he is asked that all-important question he fairly yells, "Yes, b'gosh!""

"Artemisia is now asked the question, and to the amazement of all present she says, "Not on your county fair tintype," and flounces haughtily out of the church, leaving poor Hezekiah in a state of utter collapse, surrounded by sympathizing friends."—Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 164, August 25 1908

D. W. Griffith: For Love of Gold (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: based on the short story by Jack London, “Just Meat” (1907; aka “Pals”, 1908). Photog: Arthur Marvin. Cast: Harry Solter, George Gebhardt. 

    Filmed: 21.7.1908 (NY Studio). Rel: 21.8.1908. Copy: DCP (4K), 9'45" (from paper print, 548 ft, 15 fps); Titles: ENG.

    Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Günter Buchwald.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 8 Oct 2024.

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "This early Biograph is one that film historians love to reference. Per Kemp Niver: “The legend goes that D. W. Griffith ordered the camera moved during a scene to better show the facial expressions of the actor, but here is no indication of any kind of camera movement within a scene… What Griffith actually did was to eliminate the foreground and begin the scene with the camera closer than usual to his seated actors, thereby making their expressions somewhat clearer to the audience.”"

"But writers do love to extrapolate on this example. If nothing else, this serves as a demonstration of the human tendency to take a good story and run with it. But even if Griffith didn’t cut off the actor’s feet in this film, he was to progress to do so. And For Love of Gold stands as fine documentation of a tottering baby step in the move from filming staged plays to creating cinema."

AA: Before the film Günter Buchwald treated us to a subtle performance of the second movement of Beethoven's Klaviersonate Nr. 14 op. 27 nr. 2 Quasi una fantasia ("Mondschein").

For Love of Gold is one of the earliest Jack London film adaptations - the second registered in the IMDb, only preceded by the first adaptation of The Sea Wolf (1907). The story had been published in the Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1907 - the same one that exists today, now providing sex tips for girls, still published by Hearst Communications.

For Love of Gold is a good story, echoing something timeless and absolute, like Aesop's Fables and the Parables of Jesus. A thriller, a story of crime and punishment without a detective.

A story of poison: first the rich master is drugged with chloroform. When the diamond necklace cannot be divided, the robbers poison each other.

For Love of Gold is famous for Linda Arvidson's remarks about Griffith moving his camera closer to the bandits to show their facial expressions more clearly. Every writer comments on this. I did not register any big change. For me the change took place one week earlier in The Greaser's Gauntlet.

Mostly I was impressed by the intensity of the composition, the energy of the mise-en-scène in long take and long shot.

And the "vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas" theme. This is not a big caper movie but a nutshell movie which shares the philosophy of the masterpieces of Huston, Fleischer, Dassin, Kubrick, Melville and Michael Mann.

...

I saw For Love of Gold in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 37), mattino 14 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm /15 fps/ 9 min without intertitles and Neil Brand at the piano.

Moving Picture World synopsis from the Biograph Bulletin, No. 163, August 21 1908: "A STORY OF THE UNDERWORLD TOLD IN BIOGRAPH PICTURES.

O cursed lust of gold! When for thy sake

The fool throws up his interest in both worlds

First starved in this, then damn'd in that to come.

- Blair.

"True indeed are the above lines; for what will not man do for gold. No deity is more devoutly worshiped than Mammon. Men will barter eternity's crown, yield honor - all for love of gold. It is often said there is honor among thieves, but not so, as we shall see in this story."

"Two denizens of the underworld are seen in their squalid furnished room planning a robbery. Their intended victim is known to hold at all times in his safe at home a large sum of money and a wealth of jewels."

"Gathering together the tools of their nefarious calling, they start off, arriving at the house shortly after the master had retired for the night. Entrance is easily and noiselessly effected."

"A chloroform-soaked handkerchief soon puts the master beyond the power of interfering and the safe is broken open. The sight that greets them almost makes them gasp. There in this strong box is not only an enormous sum of money, but many valuable jewels as well, prominent among which is a handsome diamond necklace."

"All this is put into a cloth, and a hurried egress made. Back to their room they go to divide the spoils of their night's haul. The diamond necklace being an indivisible article, a contention is at once raised between the partners in crime. There is no way in which they seem able one to satisfy the other, so they drop the argument for the time being to eat lunch."

"One, to make sure that he shall be the possessor of the loot, drops poison in the coffee of his chum, Which he drinks, and is soon in the throes of convulsions, falling to the floor lifeless, while the other stands by sardonically gloating over his seeming victory; but his elation is short-lived, for he is now seized with the same agony and pitches forward alongside his partner."

"The two had played the same game, each unknown to the other. "Honor among thieves?"-Bah!"—Moving Picture World synopsis from the Biograph Bulletin, No. 163, August 21 1908

Dagfin (2024 restoration Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum)

 

Joe May: Dagfin (DE 1926) with Marcella Albani (Lydia Boysen). Photo: Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen.

Joe May: Dagfin (DE 1926) with Paul Wegener (General Sabi Bey). Photo: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main.

Dagfin lo sciatore (Italian title in Switzerland) / Dagfin der Schneeschuhläufer (German title in Switzerland) / Souls Aflame (UK).

    DE 1926. Prod: Joe May, May-Film der Phoebus-Film AG, Berlin. 

    Dir: Joe May. Scen: Joe May, Adolf Lantz, Jane Bess, Hans Székely, from the novel by Werner Scheff, Dagfin der Schneeschuhläufer (1927). Photog: Karl Drews, Edgar Ziesemer. Spec. eff: Hjalmar [Helmar] Lerski, Karl Puth (Schüfftan process). Des: Erich Zander, Ernst Schütte. Mus: Willy Schmidt-Gentner (première, Berlin). 

    Cast: Paul Richter (Dagfin Holberg, a ski guide), Marcella Albani (Lydia Boysen), Paul Wegener (Sabi Bey, a Turkish general), Mary Johnson (Tilly von Gain), Alfred Gerasch (Axel Boysen, Lydia’s husband), Alexander Murski (Col. von Gain, Tilly’s father), Nien Sön Ling (Garron, secretary to Sabi Bey), Ernst Deutsch (Assairan, an Armenian), Hedwig Wangel (maidservant), Paul Biensfeldt. 

    Censor date: 3.12. 1926 (orig. l. 3407 m, cut to 3388.71 m). première: 20.12.1926 (Phoebus Palast, Berlin). 

    Not released in Finland.

    Copy: DCP, 141 min (from 35 mm, 20 fps; reconstruction l. 3134.5 m.); titles: GER. source: DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Rediscoveries.

    Grand piano: Günter Buchwald.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in English and Italian, 7 Oct 2024.

Anke Mebold (GCM 2024): "By 1926, Joe May, one of Weimar Germany’s most versatile and omnipotent producer-directors, was in dire straits: his output as director had dwindled, box office revenue from his latest film Der Farmer von Texas was unexpectedly low, re-structuring and financing of his corporate empire was time-consuming, and partnerships with changing companies made for difficult going. In addition, his wife Mia was no longer starring in his films and his daughter Eva, a successful actress in her own right, had tragically died in 1924. Dagfin stands as a rare gem at a bleak time, an oddly neglected and forgotten Joe May “Großfilm”, a large-scale production ripe for rediscovery."

"The film opens in an Alpine ski resort – location work was done in the Jungfrau area of the Alps as well as on the Riviera, while indoor shooting was at Joe May’s Berlin Weissensee studio. Sybaritic retired Turkish general Sabi Bey is friends with Axel Boysen, a cruel man devoid of empathy. His alienation of his wife Lydia’s affections has driven her into the arms of young ski instructor Dagfin Holberg. When Boysen is discovered murdered, Dagfin assumes blame with the encouragement of Sabi Bey, whose goal is to win Lydia for himself. To protect her lover, she agrees to go off with the Turk, who however is dogged by Assairan, a survivor of the Armenian genocide who’s out for revenge."

"Dagfin was scripted by four authors, one of whom, Jane Bess, was Weimar’s most prolific screenwriter, though her career remains understudied. The literary source was a novel by Werner Scheff whose title, Dagfin der Schneeschuhläufer (roughly, “Dagfin the snowshoe hiker”) is more suggestive of a “Kulturfilm” in snowy locales rather than a dramatic narrative with undertones of foreign policy critique and women’s emancipation. Consequently, in foreign distribution the film was retitled to focus on Ernst Deutsch’s role as Assairan and his game of cat-and-mouse with the fez-wearing Sabi Bey, played by Paul Wegener. The film’s original pacifist, antimilitarist message and daringly pro-Armenian stance is bold and provocative, quite out of line with Phoebus-Film’s close ties to illicit rearmament endeavors and strongly at odds with Germany’s foreign policy of friendly relations with Turkey and Atatürk."

"Multiple subtexts can be discerned throughout the entire narrative. Sabi Bey’s aura of death is underscored by bouts of unsettling memories and visions, ambiguously presented as either clairvoyance or the onset of madness. Paul Wegener’s Orientalized performance presents the character as a man of unmatched cultivation, wrapped in a sense of honor but undercut by ill-contained sensuousness, prey to violence and animalistic lust. Together with his neighbor Colonel von Gain, they are the traditional representatives of power losing control to the younger, less rigid generation represented by people such as Dagfin, the stoic Nordic countertype to the “othered” Sabi Bey. Of the women, Lydia is fighting for liberation and self-determination, while the Colonel’s daughter Tilly, doomed to stasis, faces the threat of failure in her quest to achieve full-fledged autonomy. Axel’s moral and economic failure can be read as a stand-in for traumatized soldiers returned home, the “Kriegsheimkehrer,” the German equivalent of the Lost Generation. Haunting them all is Assairan, representative of a near-annihilated minority, played by Ernst Deutsch as a vengeful survivor devoid of liveliness, traumatized beyond repair, with expressionless staring eyes like Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."

"The German Censors mandated cuts for public release, specifically objecting to the representation of Turkish military action against the Armenians so as not to strain German-Turkish relations. To conform to official demands, intertitles had to be rewritten diffusing responsibility and suggesting an accidental massacre rather than a wanton act of butchering Armenian civilians. These imposed cuts substantially weakened the pacifist, pro-Armenian impact of the film; similar cuts were implemented in the Swedish and Russian release versions. Only French distribution fully embraced the pacifist message, including “Ne tue pas” superimposed on a frame. Optical camera effects came courtesy of maverick cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, whose newly minted process was utilized by special cameramen Hjalmar Lerski and Karl Puth. In Dagfin the technique was employed to craft montage sequences highlighting moments of mental and ethical confusion, vulnerability, and decline, setting a dreamlike atmosphere akin to nightmare, an iconic Weimar-era theme. These elegantly crafted superimpositions mainly mark Sabi Bey’s inner perspective: moments of lucidity akin to insanity, an uncomfortably close entanglement of self with the “other,” the simultaneity of past and present, and confusion about right and wrong, real and imagined."

Digital Restoration 

"The international restoration carried out in 2023-24 by the DFF is a joint laboratory effort of Haghefilm in the Netherlands and L’Immagine Ritrovata in Italy. The reconstruction draws on the German censor’s record and three essential film sources, each employed in near equal parts toward re-creating the lost German original version: a vintage nitrate print of the Swedish release conserved at DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, a rare 1920s vintage diacetate print of the French release conserved in the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and an acetate duplicate negative of a Russian distribution version, from the Staatliches Filmarchiv (SFA) collection of the Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv Berlin, derived from a Gosfilmofond preservation sourced from a now-lost nitrate element. The original German titles were recreated according to the censorship record." – Anke Mebold

AA: Joe May was one of the most magnificent figures in Weimar cinema. He was not only a master producer-writer-director of Grossfilme, "big films", but he had genuine cinematic sense for instance in cinefantastique. He directed the first film adaptation of Das indische Grabmal, and Yoghi Ramigani's (Bernhard Goetzke) waking up from hibernation is not only the most startling scene in any of the three adaptations but one of the most unforgettable episodes in all fantastic cinema, comparable with Boris Karloff's awakening as The Mummy. 

As a director Joe May was at his best at the end of the silent era. He directed and wrote back to back two masterpieces, Heimkehr and Asphalt, both produced by Erich Pommer. They are sharp, deeply moving and brilliantly cinematic contemporary stories.

It was with great anticipation that I visited Dagfin, the film Joe May directed right before Heimkehr and Asphalt, his last film as a silent film producer for his own company. Dagfin is a Grossfilm with impressive production values, and it provides everything that an audience might want: a murder mystery, a complicated love story, magnificent views of the Riviera, female beauty (Marcella Albani) and male appeal: the title role is played by the hunky Paul Richter, best known as Siegfried in Die Nibelungen. In addition, Dagfin is also a breathtaking Bergfilm, a genre that had been launched by Arnold Fanck (Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs) and soon spoofed by Lubitsch (Romeo und Julia im Schnee).

So far, so good. The international restoration carried out by Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum is magnificent, and the difficult problems of the various sources have been painstakingly confronted and cracks and edges smoothed out. The restored Dagfin is good to look at.

The story is not at all times compelling, and while Marcella Albani and Paul Richter are gorgeous to look at, their performances are not as engaging as they could be.

The film's gravity thus shifts to the story of the Turkish general Sabi Bey (Paul Wegener) and his Armenian nemesis Assairan (Ernst Deutsch). Wegener is formidable, carrying his role with effortless authority. Sabi Bey interpreted by Wegener belongs to the rank of the great tyrants and monsters of Weimar cinema. Ernst Deutsch is also at his best as the avenger, and this is one of his most unforgettable performances, along with Der Golem (his earlier engagement with Wegener), Das alte Gesetz and The Third Man. Sensitive, unrelenting, unable to forget. Both are incarnations of "Shell Shock Cinema" to quote the title of Anton Kaes's classic study of Weimar cinema.

Memory montages of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire (1915-1917) are the burning, bleeding heart of Dagfin. Assairan is the sole survivor of his large Armenian family. Sabi Bey was the general in charge of the massacre. Also he has never been able to forget, and the memories give him no rest even at night. The finale in which Assairan and Sabi Bey meet again at last is surprising and unforgettable.

D. W. Griffith: The Fatal Hour (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

D. W. Griffith: The Fatal Hour (US 1908). Photomontage and caption from: Peter Gutmann: D. W. Griffith and the Dawn of Film Art, Part 2: The Power of Editing. http://www.classicalnotes.net/griffith/part2.html .© 2010 Peter Gutmann. {Portions of this article were published in Classic Images No. 81}

US © 1908 Prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin. Cast: Linda Arvidson, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt, D. W. Griffith, Anthony O’Sullivan. 

    Filmed: 21.7, 27.7.1908 (NY Studio; Fort Lee, New Jersey). Rel: 18.8.1908. Copy: DCP (4K), 14'48" (from paper print, 832 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG.

    Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society (FPS) / Tracey Goessel / digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the FPS. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Stephen Horne.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 7 Oct 2024.

There is no credit information in the film itself, just the title card with the year of copyright and the name and the address of the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, like in The Adventures of Dollie.

Tracey Goessel (GCM/FPS The Biograph Project 2024): "Here is the first time we see the Bond/Batman trope: the villain has our hero(ine) tied up while some complicated killing device is rigged up, then leaves the scene, providing just enough time for a rescue or escape. In this instance, it is a gun set to fire when the clock reaches the top of the hour."

"Seeing the sequence is much like watching a sculptor at the very start of making a piece. Griffith does not show the deadly device in close-up, and while he cuts back and forth three times between the writhing heroine and the rescuers, the shots do not progressively shorten in length. Still, he is getting the rudiments of the idea: he moved the camera closer to the protagonist in the shots that were intercut with the rescuers’ ride. He then pulled it out for her liberation, to better provide the view of all the characters. Chase + suspense = entertainment. This is the first time he uses this simple formula, but it is very far from the last."

AA: The Fatal Hour has the distinction of introducing a female action hero, a woman detective (Florence Auer in one of her first films). She outwits Hendricks, a key organizer of the white slave ring, and exposes their hideaway.

The theme of violence and abuse of women is remarkably powerful. White slavery was the expression of the day for organized crime betraying, hijacking and coercing women for prostitution. The violence of the criminals against the kidnapped woman (Linda Arvidson) and the female detective is memorably brutal. 

The movie is disgraced by racist Yellow Peril prejudice, verbalized uglily in the Biograph Bulletin copied below.

Griffith pursues what was to become his trademark: a parallel montage approach in a race to the rescue thriller story. A week earlier he had taken important steps in The Greaser's Gauntlet. In The Fatal Hour the innovation turns fundamental. The term for parallel editing is at this stage "alternate scenes".

The motif of the countdown is used effectively. The revolver is to be fired at the woman detective in 20 minutes. The hands of the clock move inexorably as the police races to save her. Tracey Goessel in her program note above suggest that this be the first appearance of this now familiar suspense situation.

In France, Éclair released the first episode (1ère série: Le Guêt-apens) of the world's first action hero serial, Nick Carter, le roi des détectives, on 8 September 1908. 

Biograph released this prototype thriller three weeks earlier. These were formative weeks in the development of mainstream cinema - in terms of action, crime and suspense.

...

I saw The Fatal Hour in GCM's The Griffith Project (DWG 38), mattino 14 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm /15 fps/ 13 min without intertitles and Neil Brand at the piano.

Moving Picture World synopsis based on the Biograph Bulletin No. 162, August 18 1908: "A STIRRING INCIDENT OF THE CHINESE WHITE-SLAVE TRAFFIC. Much has been printed by the daily press on this subject, but never has it been more vividly depicted than in this Biograph production."

"Pong Lee, a Mephistophelian, saffron-skinned varlet, has for some time carried on this atrocious female white slave traffic, in which sinister business he was assisted by a stygian whelp, by name Hendricks."

"Pong writes Hendricks that he has need for five young girls, and so Hendricks sets out to secure them. Visiting a rural district, he has no trouble, by his glib, affable manner, in gaining the confidence of several young and pretty girls. Pong is on hand with a closed carriage to bag the prey."

"One of the girls, as she is seized, emits a yell that alarms the neighborhood and brings to the scene several policemen and a couple of detectives, who have long been on the lookout for these caitiffs. The Chinese get away with the carriage, however, and Hendricks by subterfuge throws the police on the wrong scent."

"One of the detectives is a woman, and possessed of shrewd powers of deduction, hence does not swallow the bald story of the villain, and exercises her natural acumen with success. She shadows Hendricks, and by means of a flirtation inveigles him to a restaurant, where she succeeds in doping his drink."

"He falls asleep and she secures the letter written by Pong, which discloses the hiding place of the Chinaman. This she immediately telephones to the police, and while so doing Hendricks awakes and starts off to warn his friends."

"He arrives at the old deserted house ahead of the police, but escape is impossible, so the police rescue the girls, but fail to secure Pong and Hendricks, who afterwards seize the girl detective, and taking her to the house, tie her to a post and arrange a large pistol on the face of a clock in such a way that when the hands point to twelve the gun is fired and the girl will receive the charge."

"Twenty minutes are allowed for them to get away, for the hands are now indicating 11:40. Certain death seems to be her fate, and would have been had not an accident disclosed her plight. Hendricks after leaving the place is thrown by a street car, and this serves to discover his identity, so he is captured and a wild ride is made to the house in which the poor girl is incarcerated."

"This incident is shown in alternate scenes. There is the helpless girl, with the clock ticking its way towards her destruction, and out on the road is the carriage, tearing along at breakneck speed to the rescue, arriving just in time to get her safely out of range of the pistol as it goes off. In conclusion we can promise this to be an exceedingly thrilling film, of more than ordinary interest."—Moving Picture World synopsis based on the Biograph Bulletin No. 162, August 18 1908

D. W. Griffith: The Man and the Woman (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K)

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin, Billy Bitzer. Cast: Linda Arvidson, Harry Solter, Charles Inslee, George Gebhardt. 

    Filmed: 17-18.7.1908 (NY Studio; Fort Lee, New Jersey). Rel: 14.8.1908.

    Copy: DCP (4K), 13'48" (from paper print, 776 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. 

    Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society / Tracey Goessel / digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Stephen Horne.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 7 Oct 2024.

Tracey Goessel (GCM, The Biograph Project 2024): "The Man and the Woman is the first of several melodramas Griffith would produce in which the heroine is tricked into a false marriage by a scoundrel. As such, this film serves primarily as a basis by which we can observe how Griffith grew in his storytelling skills, culminating, of course, with Lillian Gish’s abandoned mother in Way Down East (1920)."

"Still, there is already evidence that, while not yet running, Griffith is at least contemplating a crawl. As Cooper Graham (The Griffith Project, Vol. 1, p. 79) points out, Griffith’s exterior shots are closer to the actors than in his single interior."

"And in the marriage scene he has his characters leave the scene by approaching the camera instead of exiting stage left or right. His work is leaving us hints of what will come."

AA: A Sunday school play, a temperance drama, a tale of sin, betrayal and redemption.

Linda Arvidson, one of the first American film stars, and the wife (during 1906-1936) of D. W. Griffith, had already played in The Adventures of Dollie, The Bandit's Waterloo, The Helping Hand, Balked at the Altar, After Many Years, The Taming of the Shrew and A Calamitous Elopement. Quoted in The Griffith Project Volume 1: Films Produced in 1907-1908, she states: "In the beginning Marion Leonard and I alternated in playing 'leads.' She played the worldly woman, the adventuress, and the melodramatic parts, while I did the sympathetic, the wronged wife, the too-trusting maid, waiting, always waiting, for the lover to come back. But mostly I died".

I pause at this notion and the absoluteness of the film title The Man and the Woman. Expressed also in the recognizable Griffith style in intertitles: "His mother blind to everything, including his nature". And the blunt, direct way of the melodrama: right after the fake wedding ceremony, Tom starts to drink, and the first domestic quarrel begins. Father shows the door to Gladys who appears with a baby. 

Whatever we think about the artistic merits of the movie, its compactness is impressive, though far from the parables of Jesus.

A decent visual quality on the DCP, with good black levels.

...

I saw The Man and the Woman for the first time. I missed it in GCM's The Griffith Project (DWG 36), pomeriggio 13 October 1997 at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 281 ft /15 fps/ 12 min without intertitles and Edward von Past at the piano. 

Moving Picture World synopsis from Biograph Bulletin, No. 161, August 14 1908: "BIOGRAPH STORY OF A MINISTER AND HIS WAYWARD BROTHER. "Lead us not into temptation". What a sermon there is in this appeal, and this subject shows the awful result of not heeding the warning voice of Divine Providence."

"John and Tom Wilkins are brothers and most divergent in natures. John is a clergyman and a noble, upright fellow, while Tom is a scapegrace, wild, reckless and unscrupulous. Not having the parental guidance so essential in youth, his father being dead and his mother blind, he drifted into bad company, the contaminating influence deeply affecting his susceptible nature."

"Despite the earnest pleading of his brother John he sank lower in morass of transgression, spending most of his time at the ale house drinking and at cards. All this John has succeeded in keeping from his dear mother, whose blindness is almost a blessing, for a mother would rather her eyes be sightless than to view the indiscretions of her loved ones."

"So she possessed the blissful impression that her boys were both paragons of righteousness. God's mercy is unfailing; you will admit this Divine Charity. In the village there dwelt, as neighbors to Wilkins, Farmer Tobias and his wife, and their daughter, Gladys. Tom and Gladys grew up together, and were child sweethearts, which grew stronger with Gladys as time went on. So deeply did she love the handsome Tom that she put her entire trust in him, feeling sure that he would reciprocate her sacrificial devotion with the honorable obligation it merited."

"But, oh, how mistaken she was, and only after prayers and tearful entreaties does he agree to marry her, and then only upon condition that she elope. To this she consents most reluctantly, for which act she is disowned by her parents. The villainy that is wrapped up in the black heart of Tom. Truly a marriage ceremony is performed, but it is by a rowdy friend of Tom's, disguised as a clergyman, in fact, a mock marriage."

"For a time Gladys lived in ignorance of the truth, but it at last came out when Tom deserts her. Back to her home she trudged carrying her infant, and at the door she is met by her mother with open arms but when the father appears, he, still obdurate, drives her away."

"She then goes to John Wilkins, and tells her sad story. He calls Tom and demands he make immediate reparation. Tom treats the matter lightly and the brothers are on the verge of blows when the blind mother, like a ministering angel, appears, and Tom's heart is at last softened. He takes Gladys and their child to his bosom, while they receive the benediction bestowed by their priestly brother." —Moving Picture World synopsis

D. W. Griffith: The Greaser's Gauntlet (1908) (2017/2024 digital scan 4K

D. W. Griffith: The Greaser's Gauntlet (US 1908). Wilfred Lucas (José) and Marion Leonard (Mildred West). For the first time Griffith cuts from a general shot (of the place and act of hanging) to this closer shot (of the two protagonists). Photo: Tracey Goessel, FairCode Associates / Library of Congress.

US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. 

    Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin. Cast: Wilfred Lucas, Marion Leonard, Harry Solter, Charles Inslee, George Gebhardt, Anthony O’Sullivan, Linda Arvidson, Arthur Johnson. 

    Filmed: 14-15.7.1908 (NY Studio; Shadyside, New Jersey). Rel: 11.8.1908. 

    Copy: DCP (4K), 18'16" (from paper print, 1027 ft, 15 fps); Titles: ENG. Source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Film Preservation Society / Tracey Goessel / digital scan, 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society. 2024 edition.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Early Cinema - The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Stephen Horne.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 7 Oct 2024.

Tracey Goessel (GCM, The Biograph Project 2024): "The Greaser’s Gauntlet is an ambitious film, with perhaps too many characters and plot twists for ready comprehension without explanatory intertitles. At 1027 feet, it is his longest film up to that time."

"But it also shows us that Griffith is starting to progress. Cooper Graham (The Griffith Project, Vol. 1, p. 77) points out that the director cuts, for the first time, within a shot, to give us a closer view of the protagonists. The camera again crept closer to the actors in interiors a full week before the benchmark claimed by historians in For Love of Gold."

"It also provides the first appearance (in the lead role, no less) of Wilfred Lucas, who was to become a steadfast member of Griffith’s acting troupe. Things were starting to gel."

AA: To understand the title I had to look up what the words mean. "Greaser" is a racial slur, here denoting a Mexican. "Gauntlet" means here hand and wrist armour.

A plot-driven film, a film based on the rules of classical drama, complete with anagnorisis (recognition as a turning-point), a film with a lot of action, with two races to the rescue, a film with an open and significant Christian spirit, a film with a racist title but without overriding racial prejudice (both Mexican and Caucasian characters are complex in terms of good and evil), a film where women embody virtue. But the criminal guilty of the theft is a Chinaman.

Mildred is the protagonist who in the beginning rescues José from being hanged by a lynch mob, and who in turn is rescued by José in the finale. Both events are linked by José's gauntlet with a cross embroidered by his mother. The cross thus also links Mildred with the mother.

In The Greaser's Gauntlet, Griffith takes major steps in cinematic storytelling. He uses parallel editing to convey Mildred's race to the rescue. It is a last minute rescue, an early instance of a trademark Griffith narrative device.

In the sequence of the hanging Griffith cuts from a general overview to a two-person full shot of the protagonists José and Mildred (see photo above). And then he cuts to an even closer view to show José cutting his gauntlet for Mildred.

The Greaser's Gauntlet is a miracle of narrative economy. Griffith had started to direct films one month earlier. He was learning by doing, by trial and error. We are privileged to witness this rapid evolution in Pordenone. We had the opportunity already in 1997, but then the prints were often barely watchable and without intertitles. Now at last  we really see them - or the best approximation.

The visual quality of the DCP on display is fair to good.

...

I saw The Greaser's Gauntlet for the first time. I missed it in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 35) in 1997 when it was shown at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 1027 ft /15 fps/ 17 min without intertitles and with Edward von Past at the piano. [On the GCM Database the length is given as 386 ft].

...

The Moving Picture World, August 15, 1908, from Biograph Bulletin, No. 260, August 11, 1908. "Though somewhat obscure in the beginning, this subject shows the efficacy of a mother's prayer. Holy is the name Mother, and many who stray from the path of righteousness to the radiantly alluring avenues of sin and prodigality, are rescued from the inevitable end by her prayers. So it is with the hero of this story. Jose, a handsome young Mexican, leaves his home in the Sierra Madre Mountains to seek his fortune in the States."

"On leaving, his dear old mother bestows upon him her blessing, presenting him with a pair of gauntlets, upon the dexter wrist of which she has embroidered a Latin Cross. This she intended as a symbol and reminder to him of her and her prayers for his welfare. She cautions him to be temperate, honest and dispassionate: to bear the burden of life's cross with fortitude and patience."

"We next find him in a tavern on the border, where congregate the cowboys, miners and railroad construction employees, a new line from the States into Mexico having just been started. This tavern is the principal hotel of the place, and as a matter of course there is a motley assemblage in the barroom, which also serves as the office."

"Tom Berkeley is the engineer of the construction company and the affianced of Mildred West, a New York girl. Mildred, being of a romantic turn of mind, and wishing to cheer Tom's life in this sandy purlieu, consents to join him and become his wife. This is the day of Mildred's arrival, and Tom meets her and her father at the train to bring them to this hotel."

"Bill Gates, an assistant engineer, has long loved the fair Mildred, but has received no encouragement, in fact his attentions are to her odious in the extreme, for she has seen behind his veneer of gentlemanly civility the despicable brute that he is."

"Their entrance at the tavern causes quite a stir, for the pretty face or the girl makes an impression on all, particularly Jose. He is silting drinking with a friend on one side of the room, while just across the way is a party of cowboys playing poker."

"One of the boys takes a roll of money, which is done up in a bandanna handkerchief, from his hip pocket, peels off a five and puts the roll back. The Chinese servant sees this and upsetting a glass of liquor on the floor, gets down, ostensibly to wipe it up, steals the money and drops the bandanna at Joses feet, who upon rising thinks it his own, puts it in his belt and goes out."

"He has hardly left the place before the robbery is noticed and of course suspicion points to him, which seems well-grounded, upon his being brought back with the incriminating bandanna hanging from his belt. At once there is a cry of 'Lynch him!' and although he protests his innocence, and despite the pleading of Mildred, who really believes him so, he is taken out to be hanged."

"Off to the woods they drag him and placing the rope about his neck they give him one more chance to confess, but still insisting be is innocent, he asks for a chance to pray. As his eye falls upon the cross on his gauntlet his thoughts go back to her, who, no doubt, is now praying with him and for him, through a mother's intuition."

"Meanwhile Mildred at the hotel is in the extreme of commiseration for Jose, who she is sure is guiltless. Coming from her room she runs suddenly into the Chinaman in the act of hiding a roll of money under the hall carpet, and before he is aware of her presence she has snatched the money from his hands and gained the admission that he is the real thief."

"Like a flash she is off after the would-be lynchers, arriving just as Jose, taking a last glance at the cross is swung in the air. Breaking through the crowd she causes the startled cowboys to release their hold on the rope, and Jose drops to the ground uninjured. A hurried explanation and return of the money to the owner, and all start after the Chinaman, leaving Mildred and Jose on the scene."

"He cannot express the gratitude he feels for the girl, but swears that if ever she needs his help he will come to her. Taking out his knife be cuts in two the gauntlet and gives her the wrist as a token of his pledge, and as she takes it her eyes sink deep into his heart, enkindling a hopeless passion for her. She in turn promises to always keep his token with her."

"Time runs on, and Jose cannot obliterate the sweet face of the girl from his mind's eye. She has in a measure usurped that of his dear mother, hence to ameliorate his sorrow, he takes to drinking and goes to the depths of degradation. At the end of five years the railroad contracts are completed and a garden fete is given in honor of Tom Berkeley, the engineer, by the officials."

"Bill Gates, of course, is present and renews his attentions to Mildred, who is now Tom's wife. She at first mildly repulses him, but when he becomes insultingly persistent, she screams, which brings to her side Tom, who with one blow sends Gates crashing through the trellis work of the arbor."

"Gates swears vengeance and, going to a low tavern for help, comes upon Jose, drunk, of course, and with him and another greaser they waylay Tom's carriage in a lonely road on their way home from the fete. A blow on the heart puts Tom out, and Gates carries Mildred, who had fainted, to the tavern, where he takes her, assisted by Jose, to the upper floor. Jose then, at Gates' suggestion, goes downstairs for some drink."

"During his absence Mildred revives and makes a desperate struggle to escape but she is restrained by Gates, and finally falls exhausted on the cot, as Jose returns with the bottles. There upon the floor is the cross-embroidered wrist of the gauntlet, which Mildred has dropped during the struggle. Jose seizes it and the truth at once dawns upon him. "Oh, God, what have I done? Yet it is not too late to undo it.""

"So with the ferociousness of a wolf he leaps at the throat of Gates and after a terrific battle drops him lifeless to the floor, as the husband and friends burst into the room. The tables are now turned and Mildred has a chance to thank him for his deliverance. Jose at the sight of the cross makes a solemn resolution, which he immediately fulfills, to return to his dear old mother in the mountains, in whose arms we leave him, concluding a film story that is one continuous concentrated absorbing thrill." -- The Moving Picture World, August 15, 1908, from Biograph Bulletin, No. 260, August 11, 1908.