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.