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| D. W. Griffith: A Calamitous Elopement (US 1908). Linda Arvidson (Jennie) and Harry Solter (Frank). |
US © 1908 American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.
Dir: D. W. Griffith. Story: ?. Photog: Billy Bitzer, Arthur Marvin. Cast: Linda Arvidson, Harry Solter, Charles Inslee, George Gebhardt, D. W. Griffith, Robert Harron.
Riprese/filmed: 9.7, 11.7.1908 (NY Studio; exterior: 11 East 14th Street, NY). Rel: 7.8.1908.
Copy: DCP (4K), 13'07" (from paper print, 738 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: Neil Brand.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 5 Oct 2024.
Tracey Goessel (GCM, The Biograph Project 2024): "Here is the first film for which Billy Bitzer served as Griffith’s cameraman."
"It was an inauspicious start. This 12-minute comedy is comprised of only 5 shots (compared to 13 for The Adventures of Dollie) staged largely before theatrically painted flats, and featuring acting of the broadest comedic style."
"But, as with any Biograph, something of interest can be found. There is the joy of an early sighting of 15-year-old Robert Harron, sporting the bellhop/delivery boy uniform in which he so often appears. In the second exterior, we even get to see the entry steps to the Biograph Studio, standing in for the precinct police station."
"In the scene at police headquarters, we see Griffith the actor break a cardinal rule that he would never have tolerated as a director. Smiling, he looks directly at Bitzer and the camera. Even young Bobby Harron knew not to do this."
AA: A romance, a farce, a crime story.
Packed with action, dense with plot, jammed into 13 minutes.
The performances are so overdone that it is hard to tell where melodrama ends and farce starts.
At times it looks like amateur village summer theater or children's theater. Based on stock characters, waving in histrionic gestures, situations telegraphed in overdone gestures. Always with a sense of fun.
Frank asks for Jennie's hand, but her father shows him the door with the classic early cinema "get out" gesture: arm firmly extended, finger pointing to the exit.
Without hesitation, Frank suggests to Jennie: "let's elope".
At night a cat burglar appears at the same time as Frank and installs a rope ladder. Frank, the bungling Romeo, struggles with it hopelessly but does not give up. He brings a solid ladder and helps Jennie elope, together with her heavy trunk.
A policeman wakes up from his slumber and arrests Frank and Jennie. Bill the Burglar hides in the trunk which is also taken to the police station. Frank and Jennie are released, and the father, now convinced of the seriousness of the courtship, sends a telegram: "all is forgiven". The burglar wakes up in the trunk in the honeymoon room and robs everything that he can get his hands on.
Griffith does not seem to take this project very seriously, and that may be the most appealing aspect of A Calamitous Elopement.
...
I missed A Calamitous Elopement in GCM's Griffith Project (DWG 32) in 1997 when it was shown at Ridotto del Verdi on 16 mm at 12 min / 15 fps without intertitles and with Edward von Past at the piano.
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