D. W. Griffith: The Valet's Wife (1908) 2025 digital restoration Film Preservation Society

The Valet’s Wife (D. W. Griffith, US, 1908). Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles. Griffith can't help flaunting his racial insensitivity. A playboy wants to fool his rich benefactor uncle by presenting himself as a family man. The surprise to all is that "his baby", whisked from the orphan asylum for the occasion, is black.

THE VALET’S WIFE (US 1908). prod: American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. dir: D. W. Griffith. sogg/story: ?. photog: Arthur Marvin, G. W. Bitzer. cast: Mack Sennett, Harry Solter, Robert Harron, George Gebhardt, Charles Avery, Florence Lawrence, Arthur Johnson. filmed: 10/11.09.1908 (NY Studio, /including exterior). rel: 01.12.1908. copy: DCP, 8'43" (from paper print, 508 ft., 16 fps); titles: ENG. source: Film Preservation Society, Los Angeles (DCP); Library of Congress, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA (paper print). Digital restoration, scanning: 2025. Intertitles written by Film Preservation Society.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone 2026: The Biograph Project.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi, 3 Oct 2026

Tracey Goessel (GCM 2026): "This film hasn’t aged well. It is hard to view a comedy where the visual punchline is the purported infant of the protagonist turning out to be – wait for it – a negro! Even worse: the Biograph Bulletin narrates the punchline thus: “…one look was enough – ‘Great Jupiter, it’s a coon!’ ” Not that contemporary critics were any more fastidious with their language. The Moving Picture News (12.05.1908) wrote, “…the grinning face of a ‘pickaninny’ comes into view.” (The infant in question does not grin. It cries, as well it might, being born of color in America in 1908.) Curiously, Griffith telegraphs to the audience that the baby is black in an earlier shot – either an oversight, or an intentional buildup of audience suspense. The comedy has a few thin virtues. Griffith moves his characters around different settings (dining room, hallway, street) with competence. The narrative moves quickly – so quickly, it feels as if Bitzer was deliberately undercranking. (Production logs do not confirm this.) Finally, we have Bobby Harron in the bellhop uniform. Sometimes that is the only consolation we can seek."

AA: A vulgar farce, full of aggravating evidence for a case against D. W. Griffith the racist. However, there are more than one side to that case. Depressing to watch. A vivid sense of action and slapstick carries the farce. It is offensive but not boring. The plot is transnational: a rich relative funds the life of a wastrel in the belief that there is a family with children to support, or at least a promise of a marriage. There is even a Finnish variation, Erkki Karu's Runoilija muuttaa.