D. W. Griffith: Deceived Slumming Party (1908) (2017 digital scan 4K)

D. W. Griffith & Wallace McCutcheon: Deceived Slumming Party (US 1908).

US 1908. Prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.  

    Dir: D. W. Griffith, Wallace McCutcheon. Story: ?. Photog: Arthur Marvin. Cast: Edward Dillon, D. W. Griffith, Mack Sennett, Harry Solter, George Gebhardt, Charles Inslee, Anthony O’Sullivan.

    Filmed: 27.5, 14.7.1908 (NY Studio; Times Square, NYC). rel: 31.7.1908.

    Copy: DCP (4K), 8'35" (from paper print, 483 ft, 15 fps); titles: ENG. source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

    Digital scan 2017. Given the absence of original intertitles, new ones have been written by the Film Preservation Society

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

    Grand piano: Neil Brand.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 5 Oct 2024. 

Tracey Goessel (GCM, The Biograph Project 2024): "The production dates document that Slumming was filmed both in late May and in mid-July; therefore Griffith directed only half the film. Which half? The exteriors filmed in Times Square? Or the interiors – the three vaudeville set pieces? Given that 27 May was a warm, sunny day, and 14 July had headline-inducing rain and hail, it is likely that Wallace McCutcheon directed the exteriors in May and Griffith handled some – or all – of the interiors in July."

"It scarcely matters. The interiors are of the “locals tricking the suckers” variety, using a gag with a sausage-making machine and Asians loading dogs and cats into the grinder. Even contemporary critics agreed this was getting old."

"We are reduced to studying Griffith’s monocle-clutching performance as the comic Englishman. He does display some minor comic skills when he attempts to coach one of the Bowery boys in the sweet art of boxing, but essentially, as an actor, D. W.  Griffith is a very good director. Just not yet."

AA: I saw Deceived Slumming Party for the first time, having missed it in the Griffith Project (DWG 34) sessions of 1997 when it was shown on 16 mm at 375 ft / 15 fps with intertitles missing.

Deceived Slumming Party recycles farce formulas that may have been old already in the 1890s, and they appeared not only in American comedies but also in the French ones by Lumière, Méliès, Alice Guy, et al. Deceived Slumming Party may have been seen like a meta-film at the time.

Striking here is the speed. The familiar ingredients are thrown into a speed-blender, and relevant imagery is also literally introduced in the final episode of the "Chinese" sausage machine where cats, dogs, rats, and even the curious Matilda of the sightseeing group are thrown. Fortunately there is a reverse button, and Matilda emerges intact from the doomsday machine.

The film is such a whirlwind and rollercoaster experience that it is as much an action film as a comedy. Is it a successful comedy? I was laughing.

The question of racism haunts early Griffith, in every film in a different way. This film's point is to spoof "slumming" tours in the Bowery and the Chinatown, with fake opium joints. So maybe we are meant to laugh at the non-Chinese and our prejudices about the Chinese.

Visual quality is surprisingly good for a DCP with paper print origins.