A Hundred Years Ago 6 – USA 1909 I: The Miracle Year of D.W. Griffith.
Presentano Gian Luca Farinelli, Camille Blot-Wellens, Béatrice [Valbin-Constant?], Mariann Lewinsky. Grand piano: Gabriel Thibaudeau. Viewed in Bologna, Cinema Lumière 1, 30 June 2009
- The tribute to Griffith's annus mirabilis was sabotaged by the terrible quality of the prints. The original negatives exist at MoMA, but for some reason good prints of Griffith's films are rare.
- In 1909 Griffith directed 142 films. Quoting Tom Gunning's introductory text to the program: "Griffith had discovered the powers of parallel editing in 1908, but in 1909 he truly explored its diverse uses from suspense, to political commentary, to psychological exploration. But if editing supplied Griffith's major narrative tool, his attention to the image, to composition and lyrical beauty expanded as well."
- Griffith discovers the landscape as an image of the soul, "soulscape"
The Country Doctor. US 1909. D: D.W. Griffith. DP: Billy Bitzer; CAST: Frank Powell, Florence Lawrence, Mary Pickford, Linda Arvidson, Kate Bruce, Gladys Egan, Adele De Garde, Stephanie Longfellow; PC: Biograph. 35mm. 287 m. B&w. From: MoMA. - Ok print.
The Cricket on the Hearth. US 1909. D: D.W. Griffith. Based on the tale (1845) by Charles Dickens; DP: Billy Bitzer, Arthur Marvin; CAST: Charles Inslee, Owen Moore, Violet Mersereau, Herbert Prior, Linda Arvidson, Mack Sennett; PC: Biograph. 16mm. 73 m. B&w. [Announced: From: MoMA.] - From LoC paper print, titles missing, terrible print, incomprehensible without the titles, impossible to appreciate the visual quality.
Pippa Passes. US 1909. D: D.W. Griffith. Based on the poem by Robert Browning (1841); DP: Billy Bitzer, Arthur Marvin; CAST: Gertrude Robinson, George Nicholls, Adele De Garde, James Kirkwood, Mack Sennett, Tony O’Sullivan, Linda Arvidson; PC: Biograph. 16mm. 11’. From: LoC. - A terrible, scratched print based on a paper print, without titles, incomprehensible, impossible to appreciate the visual quality. - This story is famously based on the transforming power of music. As the pianist missed this idea completely, the live music was another obstruction to the reception of Griffith's film.
The Red Man’s View. US 1909. D: D.W. Griffith. DP: Billy Bitzer; CAST: James Kirkwood, Arthur Johnson, Owen Moore, Lottie Pickford, Alfred Paget, W. Chrystie Miller, Dorothy West, Kate Bruce; PC: Biograph. 35mm. 296 m. B&w. [Announced: From: MoMA.] - "Restored" by LoC, seemingly from a paper print, weak visual quality.
Showing posts with label D.W. Griffith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label D.W. Griffith. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Friday, October 10, 2008
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln / Abraham Lincolns liv. US (c) 1930 Feature Productions. EX: Joseph M. Schenck. P+D: D.W. Griffith. SC: Stephen Vincent Benet, Gerrit J. Lloyd - based on the story by John W. Considine, Jr. DP: Karl Struss. AD: William Cameron Menzies. M: Hugo Riesenfeld. CAST: Walter Huston (Abraham Lincoln), Kay Hammond (Mary Todd Lincoln), Una Merkel (Ann Rutledge), Fred Warren (General Ulysses S. Grant), Hobart Bosworth (General Robert E. Lee), Frank Campeau (General Philip Sheridan), Henry B. Walthall (Colonel Marshall). 93 min. Print: MoMA, three sections missing soundtrack. Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 10 October 2008. - Mostly excellent visual quality, some sections looked like 16mm blowups, partly missing soundtrack. - I saw this film for the first time and liked it. Yes, the Ann Rutledge scenes are hammy, but true feeling shines through the clumsiness and the bad makeup. - DWG takes a humoristic look into the great man, just as John Ford did in Young Mr. Lincoln. - Kay Hammond is good as his harridan wife. - The Civil War and its generals are seen on a human scale. - Walter Huston gets better and better during the picture, and the assassination is shocking after his touching speech. In the last images we see the shack where Lincoln was born and the Lincoln monument, and hear The Battle Hymn of the Republic, but we have seen the human being from the cradle to the grave. - This is a folklore version of Lincoln. - There is a strong storyline: the Union must be preserved. - DWG's dear quotes: the Southerners were "rebels, not traitors"; "deal with them as though they'd never been away". - On Grant: "find out what brand he drinks and send a barrel to all our other generals" [Old Crow seems to have been that victorious brand]. - Not the best film of the Festival, nor a masterpiece, but my favourite film of the Festival. It is the portrait of the peacemaker. It is easy to stir violence, it is hard to stop it. - Today Matti Ahtisaari got the Nobel prize, and for a Finn there are certain similarities between Lincoln and Ahtisaari: both have shown strength of character in putting an end to civil wars. - This year in Finland we have the 90th anniversary of our civil war, still a sensitive theme, and we can understand how Americans feel about theirs.
PROLOGUES TO THE BIRTH OF A NATION SOUND REISSUE
(1) [CONVERSATION BETWEEN D.W. GRIFFITH AND WALTER HUSTON ON THE BIRTH OF A NATION] (D.W. Griffith, Inc., US 1930). D: David W. Griffith; cast: D.W. Griffith, Walter Huston; [16mm?], 213 ft., 6 min, sound; print : MoMa, original in English, e-subtitles in Italian - shown in some other format than 16mm
(2) [INTERMISSION PROLOGUE TO THE BIRTH OF A NATION REISSUE] (D.W. Griffith, Inc., US 1930). D: David W. Griffith; cast: D.W. Griffith; 225 ft., 2’30”, sound; print: LoC, original in English, e-subtitles in Italian
Kevin Brownlow: "This interview between Walter Huston and Griffith was planned as the prologue to the 1930 reissue (with soundtrack) of The Birth of a Nation, but it was probably not used. Huston and the crew had come off Abraham Lincoln. It was photographed by Karl Struss, Griffith’s regular cameraman at this period. The assistant director was the veteran Herbert Sutch, the head electrician was Edward Seward, and the children were Byron Sagee, Betsy Heisler (the daughter of Stuart Heisler?), and Dawn O’Day, a child actress who grew up to be Anne Shirley. Since the crew came from Abraham Lincoln, one can safely assume that Griffith directed it and that the assistant cameraman was Stanley Cortez." – Kevin Brownlow.
In the prologue to the second half of the film, Griffith reads intertitles from the silent version and quotations from Woodrow Wilson’s A History of the American People (1902).
"The Huston-Griffith prologue was shown when The Birth of a Nation opened as a road show at the Geary Theater in San Francisco in September 1930, and played for 3 weeks. This was a grand affair, complete with live prologue. The Griffith reading may have been shown too. But the run was a financial disappointment, involving legal entanglements with the co-producer, W.H. Kemble, a Brooklyn theatre man who with Aitken revived the Triangle Film Corp. in order to create the sound reissue of Birth. The pre-recorded interview was dropped when the show moved to Los Angeles. I don’t think it was ever used again." – Russell Merritt.
William M. Drew: "[The Walter Huston prologue] seems to have been cut from the film not long after [the run at the Geary Theatre in the fall of 1930], as I can find no mention of the prologue in the many articles and advertisements heralding the nationwide reissue of the synchronized version throughout 1931 when I was searching the online newspaper archive. Fortunately, however, the prologue was eventually rediscovered and made available in the 1960s." (William M. Drew)
It is sad to witness Walter Huston speaking of "the great Ku Klux Klan", and Griffith affirming that "rather true does it sound". And both had just filmed Abraham Lincoln.
(2) [INTERMISSION PROLOGUE TO THE BIRTH OF A NATION REISSUE] (D.W. Griffith, Inc., US 1930). D: David W. Griffith; cast: D.W. Griffith; 225 ft., 2’30”, sound; print: LoC, original in English, e-subtitles in Italian
Kevin Brownlow: "This interview between Walter Huston and Griffith was planned as the prologue to the 1930 reissue (with soundtrack) of The Birth of a Nation, but it was probably not used. Huston and the crew had come off Abraham Lincoln. It was photographed by Karl Struss, Griffith’s regular cameraman at this period. The assistant director was the veteran Herbert Sutch, the head electrician was Edward Seward, and the children were Byron Sagee, Betsy Heisler (the daughter of Stuart Heisler?), and Dawn O’Day, a child actress who grew up to be Anne Shirley. Since the crew came from Abraham Lincoln, one can safely assume that Griffith directed it and that the assistant cameraman was Stanley Cortez." – Kevin Brownlow.
In the prologue to the second half of the film, Griffith reads intertitles from the silent version and quotations from Woodrow Wilson’s A History of the American People (1902).
"The Huston-Griffith prologue was shown when The Birth of a Nation opened as a road show at the Geary Theater in San Francisco in September 1930, and played for 3 weeks. This was a grand affair, complete with live prologue. The Griffith reading may have been shown too. But the run was a financial disappointment, involving legal entanglements with the co-producer, W.H. Kemble, a Brooklyn theatre man who with Aitken revived the Triangle Film Corp. in order to create the sound reissue of Birth. The pre-recorded interview was dropped when the show moved to Los Angeles. I don’t think it was ever used again." – Russell Merritt.
William M. Drew: "[The Walter Huston prologue] seems to have been cut from the film not long after [the run at the Geary Theatre in the fall of 1930], as I can find no mention of the prologue in the many articles and advertisements heralding the nationwide reissue of the synchronized version throughout 1931 when I was searching the online newspaper archive. Fortunately, however, the prologue was eventually rediscovered and made available in the 1960s." (William M. Drew)
It is sad to witness Walter Huston speaking of "the great Ku Klux Klan", and Griffith affirming that "rather true does it sound". And both had just filmed Abraham Lincoln.
Lady of the Pavements
Sydämen laulu. US (c) 1928 United Artists. Released in 1929. PC: Art Cinema Corp. P: Joseph M. Schenck. D: D.W. Griffith. SC: Gerrit J. Lloyd, Sam Taylor - based on the novel La Paiva by Karl Vollmöller. DP: Karl Struss, G.W. Bitzer. AD: William Cameron Menzies. Original song: "Where Is The Song Of Songs For Me?" (Irving Berlin). STARRING: Lupe Velez (Nanon del Rayon), William Boyd (Count Karl von Arnim), Jetta Goudal (Countess Diane des Granges), Henry Armetta (Papa Pierre), Albert Conti (Baron Finot), George Fawcett (Baron Haussmann), Franklin Pangborn (M’sieu Dubrey, dance master), William Bakewell (a pianist). 7697 ft. /22 fps/ 94 min. - Print: MoMA. Original in English with Italian e-subtitles, grand piano: Donald Sosin, the original Irving Berlin song performed by Joanna Seaton. Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 9 September 2008. - Steven Higgins: "Schenck announced that Griffith would begin production on The Love Song, working from a script by Sam Taylor that was, in turn, based on a story by German author Karl Vollmoeller. (...) His solidly crafted shooting script for what would become Lady of the Pavements offered Schenck the hope of a box-office success.
Griffith was given two rising stars as his romantic leads – Lupe Velez (...) and William Boyd, an actor who would later make his mark as Hopalong Cassidy. Jetta Goudal, a dark beauty who had gained some notoriety as an exotic vamp, was cast as the vindictive countess. Karl Struss, assisted by Griffith veteran G.W. Bitzer, beautifully photographed William Cameron Menzies’ evocative sets. Gerrit J. Lloyd’s titles were well-suited to the Ruritanian flavor of the story and avoided the Victorian prose so characteristic of Griffith’s more personal films.
The result of all this was a well-made film, one that paid tribute to the wonders of the Hollywood studio system. Like many American releases of the late silent period, Lady of the Pavements was a polished production that entertained its audiences through a deft combination of attractive onscreen talent, obvious high production values, and efficient behind-the-camera support. Without a doubt, Lady of the Pavements was a stylish entertainment, and with it Griffith revealed that he was able to suppress his natural inclination to dominate a project, disappearing into the spirit of the piece just like any other contract director. Unfortunately, Griffith also was utterly unsuited to the milieu of the Second Empire, a historical period for which he had little feel and even less interest; as a result, for all its stylishness, the film is curiously cold, without substance or wit.
What one admires about Lady of the Pavements is its surface, not its soul. For all of the flawed and unsuccessful films he had directed during his career, never before this could Griffith have been accused of making a film lacking conviction. Here, two of his three lead actors work as if he is barely even on the set. In the case of supporting players Henry Armetta, George Fawcett, and Franklin Pangborn, Griffith gives them a great amount of latitude, allowing them to experiment with their characterizations in such a way as to suggest that he understood they would infuse his film with what little vitality it might hope to have. Jetta Goudal and William Boyd sleepwalk through their parts. Only Lupe Velez gives any indication of having worked through her character with her director, searching for the connective tissue that would explain, however tenuously, Nanon’s growth from a heedless cabaret performer to an elegant, intelligent woman deserving of love and respect. Such a wide variety of performances can make for a light-headed experience, and without a director’s careful consideration of how all the many and varied pieces should fit together, one can have the uncanny experience of watching several films at once. As well considered and clearly drawn as it is in terms of its art direction and photography, Lady of the Pavements is unfocussed in its characterizations. (...) He did attempt one bit of old-fashioned camera trickery, as a way to put some sort of personal stamp on the project. At the film’s end, when Nanon returns to the cabaret from which she was plucked, she sings a mournful song, and, while looking out at the audience, sees her husband, von Arnim, in every man in the audience. This wonderful moment was accomplished by special-effects expert Ned Mann, who filled the Smoking Dog cabaret with 13 William Boyds by exposing the camera negative 36 times. (...) Ultimately, Lady of the Pavements had its true success as a vehicle for Lupe Velez. It was released with a synchronized orchestral score, into which was interpolated at several key moments her rendition of an Irving Berlin song composed specially for the film, “Where Is the Song of Songs for Me?”." Steven Higgins [DWG Project # 621] - A good print with beautiful definition of light, but there are two major passages where the original material has been decomposing. - The film is smoothly made, and has impressive camera movement. - There is an affinity in the scorned woman's revenge plot with the Denis Diderot story which Bresson filmed as Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. - It is a pleasure to see Lupe Velez and Jetta Goudal as completely atypical Griffith women. Both have passion. - Several other actors are good, but William Boyd is bland.
Griffith was given two rising stars as his romantic leads – Lupe Velez (...) and William Boyd, an actor who would later make his mark as Hopalong Cassidy. Jetta Goudal, a dark beauty who had gained some notoriety as an exotic vamp, was cast as the vindictive countess. Karl Struss, assisted by Griffith veteran G.W. Bitzer, beautifully photographed William Cameron Menzies’ evocative sets. Gerrit J. Lloyd’s titles were well-suited to the Ruritanian flavor of the story and avoided the Victorian prose so characteristic of Griffith’s more personal films.
The result of all this was a well-made film, one that paid tribute to the wonders of the Hollywood studio system. Like many American releases of the late silent period, Lady of the Pavements was a polished production that entertained its audiences through a deft combination of attractive onscreen talent, obvious high production values, and efficient behind-the-camera support. Without a doubt, Lady of the Pavements was a stylish entertainment, and with it Griffith revealed that he was able to suppress his natural inclination to dominate a project, disappearing into the spirit of the piece just like any other contract director. Unfortunately, Griffith also was utterly unsuited to the milieu of the Second Empire, a historical period for which he had little feel and even less interest; as a result, for all its stylishness, the film is curiously cold, without substance or wit.
What one admires about Lady of the Pavements is its surface, not its soul. For all of the flawed and unsuccessful films he had directed during his career, never before this could Griffith have been accused of making a film lacking conviction. Here, two of his three lead actors work as if he is barely even on the set. In the case of supporting players Henry Armetta, George Fawcett, and Franklin Pangborn, Griffith gives them a great amount of latitude, allowing them to experiment with their characterizations in such a way as to suggest that he understood they would infuse his film with what little vitality it might hope to have. Jetta Goudal and William Boyd sleepwalk through their parts. Only Lupe Velez gives any indication of having worked through her character with her director, searching for the connective tissue that would explain, however tenuously, Nanon’s growth from a heedless cabaret performer to an elegant, intelligent woman deserving of love and respect. Such a wide variety of performances can make for a light-headed experience, and without a director’s careful consideration of how all the many and varied pieces should fit together, one can have the uncanny experience of watching several films at once. As well considered and clearly drawn as it is in terms of its art direction and photography, Lady of the Pavements is unfocussed in its characterizations. (...) He did attempt one bit of old-fashioned camera trickery, as a way to put some sort of personal stamp on the project. At the film’s end, when Nanon returns to the cabaret from which she was plucked, she sings a mournful song, and, while looking out at the audience, sees her husband, von Arnim, in every man in the audience. This wonderful moment was accomplished by special-effects expert Ned Mann, who filled the Smoking Dog cabaret with 13 William Boyds by exposing the camera negative 36 times. (...) Ultimately, Lady of the Pavements had its true success as a vehicle for Lupe Velez. It was released with a synchronized orchestral score, into which was interpolated at several key moments her rendition of an Irving Berlin song composed specially for the film, “Where Is the Song of Songs for Me?”." Steven Higgins [DWG Project # 621] - A good print with beautiful definition of light, but there are two major passages where the original material has been decomposing. - The film is smoothly made, and has impressive camera movement. - There is an affinity in the scorned woman's revenge plot with the Denis Diderot story which Bresson filmed as Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. - It is a pleasure to see Lupe Velez and Jetta Goudal as completely atypical Griffith women. Both have passion. - Several other actors are good, but William Boyd is bland.
The Little Tease
US 1913. PC: Biograph. D: D.W. Griffith. STARRING: Mae Marsh (Little Tease), W. Chrystie Miller (father), Kate Bruce (mother), Robert Harron (sweetheart), Henry B. Walthall (stranger), Viola Barry, Lionel Barrymore. A 35mm blowup from an 8mm print from Andreas Benz Collection (Neckarsulm). /16 fps/ 21 min. Original in English, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin. Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 9 September 2008. - Believed lost, this DWG film has survived in 8mm form in the collection of Andreas Benz. - Russell Merritt: "Tomboyish mountain girl Little Tease has her head turned by a smooth-talking, charismatic stranger she finds wandering through the woods. The stranger persuades Little Tease to run away from home, but in the valley she discovers his true colors. In a hotel, she sees him making love to another woman, and considers shooting him. Instead she runs away and finds work in a roadhouse, where her childhood sweetheart urges her to return home. Pride keeps her at the roadhouse, but the mountain flower her sweetheart leaves behind stirs irresistible family memories. She starts up the mountain while, by degrees, her father moves out of his bitterness while reading his Bible. Softened by his reading, he opens his window to let in the sunshine, sees his daughter at prayer over her mother’s grave, and calls her back into his arms." Russell Merritt [DWG Project # 468] - A film that gravitates around the Bible, with important shots highlighting passages from the Holy Book. - It is the story of the Prodigal Daughter.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
The Battle of the Sexes
Sukupuolten taistelu. US 1928. PC: Art Cinema Corp. P+D: D.W. Griffith. SC: Gerrit J. Lloyd - based on the story "The Single Standard" by Daniel Garson Goodman. CIN: G.W. Bitzer, Karl Struss. AD: Park French, William Cameron Menzies. Cast: Jean Hersholt (J.C. Judson), Phyllis Haver (Marie Skinner), Belle Bennett (Mrs. Judson), Don Alvarado (Babe [Jim] Winsor), Sally O’Neill (Ruth Judson), William Bakewell (Billy Judson); 7846 ft /24 fps/ 87 min, print: GEH, original in English, with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne. Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 8 October 2008. - J.B. Kaufman: "Few films can offer as revealing a perspective on Griffith’s late-1920s career as his 1928 remake of The Battle of the Sexes. Remakes were a rarity in Griffith’s career anyway, but his two versions of this story were separated by a gap of 14 years – turbulent years that saw a world war, the rise of the Roaring Twenties, and vast social changes with which, we have often been told, Griffith could not keep up. In a sense The Battle of the Sexes disproves that notion, for it takes place in a world very different from that of 1914. Unfortunately only a fragment of the 1914 Battle of the Sexes is known to survive, but from that fragment and from contemporary publicity and reviews we can gather a sense of the tone Griffith took in that version. As Donald Crisp strayed from his loving wife and children to dally with an adventuress, there can be little doubt that Griffith depicted such infidelity seriously, delivering a stern warning to anyone (erring husband or adventuress) who would threaten the sanctity of the home – a warning not unlike those he had delivered more than once in his recent Biograph films.
What a difference in 1928! The plot is the same, but the 1928 Battle of the Sexes is framed as a comedy, complete with wisecracking titles and designed almost exclusively for entertainment value. An index to the contrast between the two versions can be seen in their casts. The straying husband, played in 1914 by rock-solid Donald Crisp, is portrayed in 1928 by the short, pudgy, vulnerable, and frequently ludicrous Jean Hersholt. The temptress, as played in 1914 by a young Fay Tincher, was attractive enough but clearly a lightweight. In 1928, as played by blonde bombshell Phyllis Haver, she’s the star of the picture. Her golddigger (in updated late-1920s parlance), a voracious glamour girl with a heart of brass, is both firmly in control of the plot and thoroughly likable, quite the most entertaining thing in the film. Hersholt hasn’t a chance against her formidable charms, and his character becomes more sympathetic as a result.
Griffith has not, of course, abandoned his value system altogether, and midway through the picture he shifts gears. The damage wrought upon the businessman’s family is clearly meant to be taken seriously. Here again, however, the film’s cast works against a severely moralistic preachment: the members of the businessman’s family, the bedrock of the original film, are played in the remake by the weakest members of the cast. Belle Bennett, fresh from notable “mother” roles in such films as Stella Dallas (...) and John Ford’s Mother Machree (...), was probably an obvious choice to play the wife/mother, but she registers little or no impression; as Variety observed, she “is inclined to be monotonous in her simplicity”. Sally O’Neill and Billy Bakewell, as the businessman’s children, are hardly a match for Lillian Gish and Bobby Harron in the original, and their disconcertingly strenuous efforts to project youth and vivacity are no help at all.
The surviving fragment of the 1914 The Battle of the Sexes is the scene in which the businessman and his paramour are discovered at a cabaret by his family. Comparing this fragment with the corresponding sequence in the remake allows us to see how Griffith’s technique has changed in the intervening years. The 1928 version has been expanded in every way: more camera positions, more varied activity by the principals and by the other nightclub patrons (with a running gag involving a diner at a nearby table), not to mention a much larger and more glamorous nightclub – surely a reflection of how such places had changed in real life during the 1920s. This eye-popping nightclub set is the work of William Cameron Menzies (...)
The fluidity of the sequence, and the rest of the film, is further enhanced by occasional dolly or tracking shots. Billy Bitzer had photographed the 1914 The Battle of the Sexes (...) single-handed, but for the remake he was teamed with the distinguished cinematographer Karl Struss, whose mobile camera had recently been used to good effect in Sunrise (...) Perhaps the most striking of the moving-camera shots (...) comes as Belle Bennett, in a daze, wanders deliriously on the roof of the apartment building. As she totters dangerously near the edge, the camera, in a sudden point-of-view shot, plunges sickeningly straight down the side of the building.
(...) released late in 1928, the key transitional year of the talking-picture revolution (...) with a synchronized score, augmented with sound effects, and in Phyllis Haver’s singing scene the sound of her voice was loosely synchronized with her singing image onscreen. This was apparently the film’s one concession to the talkies, but it was enough for Variety to classify it explicitly as a sound film. Griffith, for his part, was unhappy with the soundtrack and registered a futile complaint with United Artists over the music in the opening and closing scenes. Where Griffith had envisioned a tender arrangement of “Together” or “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” in these scenes, the score supplied up-tempo comedy music instead.
(...) Critics were unanimously disappointed in the film, more than one comparing it unfavorably with Paramount’s The Way of All Flesh (...), which had featured a similar plot situation and Belle Bennett and Phyllis Haver in comparable roles. (...)" J.B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 619]. - AA: DWG in the new mood with a moving, swinging camera, glossy surfaces, in touch with the Jazz Age. The framing scenes are the mother's birthdays. In the final birthday party the present is the father, who in between has strayed with the flapper. Fun with the middle-age father trying to get in shape with the flapper via calisthenics. This is no masterpiece, but it is interesting to see DWG succeed with the new kind woman (Phyllis Haver). - There is in the beginning the "hands, feet only" device also seen in a couple of other films of the Festival, the most famous use of which is in Strangers on a Train. - It is a comedy, but with a dimension of tragedy with the mother's suicide attempt and the daughter's murder attempt.
What a difference in 1928! The plot is the same, but the 1928 Battle of the Sexes is framed as a comedy, complete with wisecracking titles and designed almost exclusively for entertainment value. An index to the contrast between the two versions can be seen in their casts. The straying husband, played in 1914 by rock-solid Donald Crisp, is portrayed in 1928 by the short, pudgy, vulnerable, and frequently ludicrous Jean Hersholt. The temptress, as played in 1914 by a young Fay Tincher, was attractive enough but clearly a lightweight. In 1928, as played by blonde bombshell Phyllis Haver, she’s the star of the picture. Her golddigger (in updated late-1920s parlance), a voracious glamour girl with a heart of brass, is both firmly in control of the plot and thoroughly likable, quite the most entertaining thing in the film. Hersholt hasn’t a chance against her formidable charms, and his character becomes more sympathetic as a result.
Griffith has not, of course, abandoned his value system altogether, and midway through the picture he shifts gears. The damage wrought upon the businessman’s family is clearly meant to be taken seriously. Here again, however, the film’s cast works against a severely moralistic preachment: the members of the businessman’s family, the bedrock of the original film, are played in the remake by the weakest members of the cast. Belle Bennett, fresh from notable “mother” roles in such films as Stella Dallas (...) and John Ford’s Mother Machree (...), was probably an obvious choice to play the wife/mother, but she registers little or no impression; as Variety observed, she “is inclined to be monotonous in her simplicity”. Sally O’Neill and Billy Bakewell, as the businessman’s children, are hardly a match for Lillian Gish and Bobby Harron in the original, and their disconcertingly strenuous efforts to project youth and vivacity are no help at all.
The surviving fragment of the 1914 The Battle of the Sexes is the scene in which the businessman and his paramour are discovered at a cabaret by his family. Comparing this fragment with the corresponding sequence in the remake allows us to see how Griffith’s technique has changed in the intervening years. The 1928 version has been expanded in every way: more camera positions, more varied activity by the principals and by the other nightclub patrons (with a running gag involving a diner at a nearby table), not to mention a much larger and more glamorous nightclub – surely a reflection of how such places had changed in real life during the 1920s. This eye-popping nightclub set is the work of William Cameron Menzies (...)
The fluidity of the sequence, and the rest of the film, is further enhanced by occasional dolly or tracking shots. Billy Bitzer had photographed the 1914 The Battle of the Sexes (...) single-handed, but for the remake he was teamed with the distinguished cinematographer Karl Struss, whose mobile camera had recently been used to good effect in Sunrise (...) Perhaps the most striking of the moving-camera shots (...) comes as Belle Bennett, in a daze, wanders deliriously on the roof of the apartment building. As she totters dangerously near the edge, the camera, in a sudden point-of-view shot, plunges sickeningly straight down the side of the building.
(...) released late in 1928, the key transitional year of the talking-picture revolution (...) with a synchronized score, augmented with sound effects, and in Phyllis Haver’s singing scene the sound of her voice was loosely synchronized with her singing image onscreen. This was apparently the film’s one concession to the talkies, but it was enough for Variety to classify it explicitly as a sound film. Griffith, for his part, was unhappy with the soundtrack and registered a futile complaint with United Artists over the music in the opening and closing scenes. Where Griffith had envisioned a tender arrangement of “Together” or “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” in these scenes, the score supplied up-tempo comedy music instead.
(...) Critics were unanimously disappointed in the film, more than one comparing it unfavorably with Paramount’s The Way of All Flesh (...), which had featured a similar plot situation and Belle Bennett and Phyllis Haver in comparable roles. (...)" J.B. Kaufman [DWG Project # 619]. - AA: DWG in the new mood with a moving, swinging camera, glossy surfaces, in touch with the Jazz Age. The framing scenes are the mother's birthdays. In the final birthday party the present is the father, who in between has strayed with the flapper. Fun with the middle-age father trying to get in shape with the flapper via calisthenics. This is no masterpiece, but it is interesting to see DWG succeed with the new kind woman (Phyllis Haver). - There is in the beginning the "hands, feet only" device also seen in a couple of other films of the Festival, the most famous use of which is in Strangers on a Train. - It is a comedy, but with a dimension of tragedy with the mother's suicide attempt and the daughter's murder attempt.
BEFORE THE LONELY VILLA
Before The Lonely Villa: tracking down the origins of the telephone thriller and alternating editing and crosscutting / parallel editing.
E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne, viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 8 October 2008.
The Lonely Villa. US 1909. PC: Biograph. D: D.W. Griffith; DP: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin; cast: David Miles (husband), Marion Leonard (wife), Mary Pickford (daughter), Gladys Egan, Adele De Garde, Owen Moore, Mack Sennett; 850 ft /16 fps/ 14 min; print: LoC. - Tom Gunning: "Mr. Cullison has responded to a false note telling him to meet his mother-in-law at the train station, and left his wife and daughters alone in their large country house. The note was sent by a gang of thieves to draw him out, and they have proceeded to burglarize the villa. The wife and daughters hear unexplained noises and discover the attempt to break into the house. At that very moment, the husband calls to say he has car trouble and learns of their plight. As he speaks to his wife, the burglars cut the telephone wires. Desperate, the husband enlists the aid of a policeman and, his car still out of commission, commandeers a gypsy wagon for a race to the rescue. Meanwhile, the burglars have broached the doorway and penetrated into the various rooms of the villa, and burst through the doors the wife has barricaded. They clear the last obstacle and are snatching the pearl necklace from Mrs. Cullison’s throat when the father arrives with the policeman and the family is saved." – Tom Gunning [DWG Project # 150]. - A brilliant image, no titles in this print.
Le Médecin du château / Der Arzt des Schlosses / The Physician of the Castle [GB] / A Narrow Escape [US]). FR 1908. PC: Pathé. D: ?; 367 ft /16 fps/ 6 min; print source: BFINA / Josef Joye Collection. Deutsche Titel (in the beginning?), English titles (in the end?). - Not a top print but from a source with a good definition of light. - Henri Bousquet: "Dr. Amy is unexpectedly called to the castle by a message delivered by an unknown person. No sooner has he left than two thieves break into his house. The doctor’s wife seeks refuge in the study; from there she calls her husband by telephone. She piles some furniture against the door, well knowing that this will only briefly keep out the malefactors. But on receiving the call the doctor has leapt into his car and returns home at full speed. On the way he meets two game-keepers and takes them along with him. They arrive just as the two bandits enter the office. After a brief struggle they capture the two villains.” – Henri Bousquet (Catalogue Pathé)
Terrible angoisse. FR 1906. PC: Pathé. D: Lucien Nonguet; 78 m /16 fps/ 4 min; print: AFF/CNC. - (Pathé catalogue supplement, March 1906): “A brilliant lawyer, on holiday, is suddenly called to the Palace of Justice. During his absence, burglars break into the house and the lawyer’s wife has only time to run to the telephone to call her husband. While she is telling him about the presence of the malefactors, they leap at her throat and strangle her, together with her little son. Hearing nothing from the other end of the phone line, the unhappy lawyer guesses what is happening, and, crazed with grief, rushes home; he throws himself upon the corpses of his beloved spouse and his child.” (Pathé catalogue supplement, March 1906). - AA: a soft image in this print (digimastered?).
The Watermelon Patch. US 1905. PC: Edison. D: Edwin S. Porter, Wallace McCutcheon [Sr.? Jr.?]; cast: Florence Auer?; 35mm, ?? ft., ?’ (16 fps); fonte copia/print source: Museum of Modern Art, New York. No intertitles. - André Gaudreault, Philippe Gauthier: "The Watermelon Patch contains one of the rare prototypes of cross-cutting (in early cinema). The film’s storyline can be summarized as follows: two whites chase a small group of blacks caught stealing watermelons from a field. The film’s action is so convoluted, and its narrative secondary to attraction to such a degree, that it is not easy to identify the alternating structure present in it. But this structure truly is present in the film, even if it is far from jumping out at us. Alternating editing is a discursive configuration whose minimal form is the recurrence of each term in two series. In other words, it is impossible to speak of alternating editing when only one of the terms recurs (A-B-A). At a minimum, it requires that each series recur (A-B-A-B). Cross-cutting, for its part, is only one of the forms of alternating editing within which series of events supposedly unfold simultaneously in the narrative universe suggested by the film. Thus, in our view, The Watermelon Patch is a true example of cross-cutting. (...) Here, then, is a film which demonstrates a degree of narrative planning and sophistication quite rare for 1905. It is the true prototype of cross-cutting, for which film historians of every generation have been searching for many years now. And it is the prototype of cross-cutting despite the fact that it is just as much a worthy representative of the paradigm of attraction." – André Gaudreault, Philippe Gauthier. - An important discovery in the research of alternating editing (montage alternant), and crosscutting or parallel editing (montage alterné) as illuminated in Gaudreault and Gauthier's essay in The Griffith Project 12 book. - Also a disturbingly racist film.
E-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Stephen Horne, viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 8 October 2008.
The Lonely Villa. US 1909. PC: Biograph. D: D.W. Griffith; DP: G.W. Bitzer, Arthur Marvin; cast: David Miles (husband), Marion Leonard (wife), Mary Pickford (daughter), Gladys Egan, Adele De Garde, Owen Moore, Mack Sennett; 850 ft /16 fps/ 14 min; print: LoC. - Tom Gunning: "Mr. Cullison has responded to a false note telling him to meet his mother-in-law at the train station, and left his wife and daughters alone in their large country house. The note was sent by a gang of thieves to draw him out, and they have proceeded to burglarize the villa. The wife and daughters hear unexplained noises and discover the attempt to break into the house. At that very moment, the husband calls to say he has car trouble and learns of their plight. As he speaks to his wife, the burglars cut the telephone wires. Desperate, the husband enlists the aid of a policeman and, his car still out of commission, commandeers a gypsy wagon for a race to the rescue. Meanwhile, the burglars have broached the doorway and penetrated into the various rooms of the villa, and burst through the doors the wife has barricaded. They clear the last obstacle and are snatching the pearl necklace from Mrs. Cullison’s throat when the father arrives with the policeman and the family is saved." – Tom Gunning [DWG Project # 150]. - A brilliant image, no titles in this print.
Le Médecin du château / Der Arzt des Schlosses / The Physician of the Castle [GB] / A Narrow Escape [US]). FR 1908. PC: Pathé. D: ?; 367 ft /16 fps/ 6 min; print source: BFINA / Josef Joye Collection. Deutsche Titel (in the beginning?), English titles (in the end?). - Not a top print but from a source with a good definition of light. - Henri Bousquet: "Dr. Amy is unexpectedly called to the castle by a message delivered by an unknown person. No sooner has he left than two thieves break into his house. The doctor’s wife seeks refuge in the study; from there she calls her husband by telephone. She piles some furniture against the door, well knowing that this will only briefly keep out the malefactors. But on receiving the call the doctor has leapt into his car and returns home at full speed. On the way he meets two game-keepers and takes them along with him. They arrive just as the two bandits enter the office. After a brief struggle they capture the two villains.” – Henri Bousquet (Catalogue Pathé)
Terrible angoisse. FR 1906. PC: Pathé. D: Lucien Nonguet; 78 m /16 fps/ 4 min; print: AFF/CNC. - (Pathé catalogue supplement, March 1906): “A brilliant lawyer, on holiday, is suddenly called to the Palace of Justice. During his absence, burglars break into the house and the lawyer’s wife has only time to run to the telephone to call her husband. While she is telling him about the presence of the malefactors, they leap at her throat and strangle her, together with her little son. Hearing nothing from the other end of the phone line, the unhappy lawyer guesses what is happening, and, crazed with grief, rushes home; he throws himself upon the corpses of his beloved spouse and his child.” (Pathé catalogue supplement, March 1906). - AA: a soft image in this print (digimastered?).
The Watermelon Patch. US 1905. PC: Edison. D: Edwin S. Porter, Wallace McCutcheon [Sr.? Jr.?]; cast: Florence Auer?; 35mm, ?? ft., ?’ (16 fps); fonte copia/print source: Museum of Modern Art, New York. No intertitles. - André Gaudreault, Philippe Gauthier: "The Watermelon Patch contains one of the rare prototypes of cross-cutting (in early cinema). The film’s storyline can be summarized as follows: two whites chase a small group of blacks caught stealing watermelons from a field. The film’s action is so convoluted, and its narrative secondary to attraction to such a degree, that it is not easy to identify the alternating structure present in it. But this structure truly is present in the film, even if it is far from jumping out at us. Alternating editing is a discursive configuration whose minimal form is the recurrence of each term in two series. In other words, it is impossible to speak of alternating editing when only one of the terms recurs (A-B-A). At a minimum, it requires that each series recur (A-B-A-B). Cross-cutting, for its part, is only one of the forms of alternating editing within which series of events supposedly unfold simultaneously in the narrative universe suggested by the film. Thus, in our view, The Watermelon Patch is a true example of cross-cutting. (...) Here, then, is a film which demonstrates a degree of narrative planning and sophistication quite rare for 1905. It is the true prototype of cross-cutting, for which film historians of every generation have been searching for many years now. And it is the prototype of cross-cutting despite the fact that it is just as much a worthy representative of the paradigm of attraction." – André Gaudreault, Philippe Gauthier. - An important discovery in the research of alternating editing (montage alternant), and crosscutting or parallel editing (montage alterné) as illuminated in Gaudreault and Gauthier's essay in The Griffith Project 12 book. - Also a disturbingly racist film.
Two Daughters of Eve
US 1912. PC: Biograph. D: D.W. Griffith; DP: G.W. Bitzer; cast: Claire McDowell (mother), Henry B. Walthall (father), Florence Geneva (showgirl), Robert Harron, D.W. Griffith, W. Christy Cabanne, Harry Carey; Betacam SP (transfer from 8mm acetate print, 16 fps), 12’, print source: Andres Benz Collection, Neckarsulm. Original in English with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Andreas Benz. Viewed in Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Ridotto del Verdi, 7 October 2008. - The New York Dramatic Mirror: "Deep in the breasts of most women, underneath the painted exterior of many, lie the same natural spontaneous instincts of true womanhood. This is the truth brought out in this drama dealing with love and sacrifice of two women. One possesses a husband, a child, and money, and the other is doing a song and dance in the chorus of a cheap musical show. The child becomes lost one afternoon while the parents are visiting in the neighborhood of the theater, and is found in the arms of the chorus girl. The mother snatches the child away, fearful lest it should become contaminated with such company. By a peculiar twist of fortune, in the months that follow this incident, the husband becomes enamored with the charms of the pretty chorus girl and neglects his wife so that she is forced to leave him. Soon afterward, he loses his fortune, and when the chorus girl turns against him, he is left to realize his bitter condition. The mother, unable to find employment, as a last resort applies at the theater, where she met the other woman months before. At first the girl laughs at the mother, but is afterward touched by her sorrow and destitute condition. Following the mother into the dressing-room, she gives her jewels that rightfully belong to her; jewels that the husband has squandered his money upon. It proves the mother’s temporal salvation, and the chorus girl returning home with her, is now allowed to kiss the child. The husband is forgiven and the little family of three go out to start life over again, while the chorus girl retires into the background with sad and longing eyes. It is a story of vivid contrasts.” The New York Dramatic Mirror, 25 September 1912, p.32 [DWG Project # 427]. - AA: a film so laconic, it's hard to follow. Ostensibly melodramatic, it reverses expectations. The showgirl shows love and compassion to all. The mother must learn the hard way. The husband cheats them both. It's rare to see full-figured Rubensian female charms with DWG, and Florenca Geneva belongs to the Marilyn Monroe tradition of American cinema. An early appearance of Lillian Gish as an extra.
Saved from Himself
US 1911. PC: Biograph. D: D.W. Griffith; cast: Joseph Graybill, Mabel Normand, Charles Hill Mailes, William J. Butler; Betacam SP (transfer from 8mm acetate print, 16 fps), 16', print source: Andreas Benz Collection, Neckarsulm. Original in English with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Andreas Benz. Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Ridotto del Verdi, 7 October 2008. - Charlie Keil: "A young hotel clerk engaged to be married invests his life’s savings in the stock market. When the stocks’ value begins to drop, his broker alerts him that it is essential he send another $2,000 in order to prevent a total loss. The temptation offered by a large amount of money deposited at the hotel for safekeeping almost proves too much, but the man is prevented from incriminating himself by his fiancée’s influence." – Charlie Keil [DWG Project # 379]. - AA: the Killiam /Blackhawk version with their introduction. Woman prevents man from crime, last minute rescue, man and flower in final image. Good to see Normand in a straight, non-comic role.
The Revenue Man and the Girl
US 1911. PC: Biograph. D: D.W. Griffith; DP: G.W. Bitzer; cast: Dorothy West (the moonshiner's daughter), Edwin August (the revenue man), Gladys Egan, Charles Hill Mailes, Charles H. West; Betacam SP (transfer from 8mm acetate print, 16 fps), 14’; print source: Andreas Benz Collection, Neckarsulm. Original in English with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Andreas Benz. Viewed in Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Ridotto del Verdi, 7 October 2008. - David Mayer: "The moonshiner’s daughter is first seen caressing and kissing her pet dove. Carrying hollowed gourds to be used as “jugs” for the distilled brew, she is sent by her father to assist at the illegal still. Meanwhile, pair of revenue men sneak through the forest, intent on discovering the still. Coming upon the girl’s cabin, the revenue men arrest and disarm two moonshiners, then begin their trek to take the arrested men back to jail. Alerted to the men’s arrest by the younger daughter, the moonshiners arm themselves and track the revenuers to the point at which they are handing the arrested men to other unidentified law officers. In the gun battle between the revenue men and the moonshiners, the girl’s father and one of the revenuers are killed. The other revenue man, frightened and disoriented, runs from his pursuers, loses his rife in a fast-moving creek, and reaches a temporary hiding place exhausted and unarmed. The girl, discovering her father’s corpse and that of the slain revenuer, mourns her parent and promises vengeance against revenuers even as she abuses the revenue man’s dead body. With the father buried and mourned, the girl, armed with a rifle, joins the remaining moonshiners in pursuit of the hidden revenuer. She stalks the fugitive through the forest, spies him, and is about to take aim, when her pet dove drops from a tree directly onto the revenue man. He picks up and caresses the dove, feeds it (revenue men always carry birdseed just in case, especially when they’re on tax raids in Kentucky, where white doves tend to plummet suddenly from trees), and releases it. Observing the revenue man’s kindness to the dove and moved by his gentleness, the girl is now disposed to be kinder to the revenue man. She takes him to her cabin, hides him beneath her bed, and pretends to be asleep when the moonshiner posse comes in pursuit. Having successfully saved the revenue man, the girl sends him on his way, but he hangs back, declares his love for the girl, and, after some hesitation on her part, gets her to confess her affection for her. We last see them as, backs to the camera and her belongings in a bundle tied to a stick, they stroll from the forest onto a country road leading to town." – David Mayer [DWG Project # 361]. - AA: a naive, strong, compact drama. Print stems from the Paul Killiam edition with his introduction. Impressive brevity, strong sense of the nature.
The Drums of Love
Kahden veljen rakkaus. US 1928. PC: United Artists. P+D: D.W. Griffith. SC: Gerrit J. Lloyd.DP: G.W. Bitzer, Harry Jackson, Karl Struss. AD: William Cameron Menzies, cast: Mary Philbin (Emanuella), Lionel Barrymore (Duke Cathos de Alvia), Don Alvarado (Count Leonardo de Alvia), Tully Marshall (Bopi), William Austin (Raymond of Boston), Eugenie Besserer (Duchess de Alvia), Charles Hill Mailes (Duke de Granada); 16mm, 3318 ft /20 fps/ 111 min [including alternate ending 178 ft /20 fps/ 6 min]; print: LoC, original in English with e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Gabriel Thibaudeau. Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Ridotto dal Verdi, 7 October 2008. - A bad 16mm print, I watched just a sample. - Scott Simmon: "From the time of his first Biograph films, D.W. Griffith was always seducible by solemn “art”. Presented with art director William Cameron Menzies (...) and cinematographer Karl Struss (...), Griffith came up with a story inspired by doomed lovers Paolo and Francesca for a film that is beautifully crafted but off-balance in structure and slow in pace. Variety’s positive review (“a sweet comeback for Griffith”) nevertheless recognized that it would be a hard sell to the mass audience: “Drums of Love is a loge section film. The art centers will love it. That’s sure. Its basic appeal is to the playgoer who thoroughly enjoys the Theatre Guild.” The most telling initial notice was from the New York Telegram: “Reviewing a Griffith picture is like nothing else in the experience of an American picture fan. For, after all, D.W. has been our first and foremost, our best beloved, our pet genius whom we could always count on when the great lords from overseas – the Murnaus, the Lubitsches and the Stillers – arrived with their great bag of tricks to show us how it is done. And that’s why it’s so tarnation sad when the Grand Old Man turns out a Drums of Love.”
Were it not such an extraordinarily dark tale, it would be easier to see this strangely titled film (“drums” of love are nowhere to be found in it) as Griffith’s first “Hollywood” movie. When he had last directed in Los Angeles in 1919, he had still been his own producer. Now he was back with an excellent employee’s contract for what turned out to be the first of four features produced by Joseph Schenck (initially at his appealingly named Art Cinema Corporation) for release through United Artists, of which Schenck was also president. These films would essentially put an end to Griffith’s career.
The structure and style of The Drums of Love are unconventional, and not without interest. After a static scene of the Alvia brothers swearing eternal love for each other at their father’s deathbed, shot with Karl Struss’ recognizably misty diffusion, the perspective switches to a sequence more characteristic of Griffith. The brothers lead troops to victory in a large-scale battle against the Duke of Granada’s forces. It’s the sort of scene, however, that would usually climax a Griffith film, and here it’s tossed off perfunctorily. Most of the rest of the film will rely for spectacle on unconvincing glass-shot effects. Unusual for Griffith too is the fluid mobility of the camera in early scenes, especially of carefree Emanuella at her father’s home. The tone of the rest of the film seems also to weigh down the camera.
The performances are so varied in expressiveness as to lead to a disastrous imbalance in the film as a whole. Top-billed was Mary Philbin, a pleasant-enough actress who was developing an odd career repeatedly playing the lovely consort of deeply deformed but good-hearted men (...) Dolled up in a Goldilocks wig and “recently home from the convent”, she is here paired with Don Alvarado, one of the low-rent Latin Lover replacements after Valentino’s death. His acting range appears so extremely limited that, by the climax of The Drums of Love, his character’s passion and guilt register as a Kuleshov test – an identical expression distinguished only by whether it is edited next to Emanuella or a portrait of his brother: “Sometimes there is a lethargy about his actions,” in the New York Times’s understatement. The human interest in the film arises from the convincing and even endearing performance of Lionel Barrymore as Duke Cathos; it was “this actor’s outstanding camera achievement to date,” in Variety’s verdict. When Emanuella first sees Cathos, he’s shadowed in Expressionist darkness that emphasizes his heavy brow, broad mustache, and hairy hands, but he’s also immediately rather winning in mocking his own hump and letting her know that she’s quite free to withdraw from the marriage “and none will be the worse”. (It’s her father who again forces the union.) Barrymore provides the rare flashes of wit in a film too weighed down by intertitles penned by Griffith with his former publicist Gerrit J. Lloyd; “it would … have been far more satisfactory to include in the captions phrases that were less hard and contained an element of charm,” noted the New York Times. As the un-comic jester, Tully Marshall skulks around melodramatically, as if testing out the character he will use to drool on Gloria Swanson later that year in Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly (1928). It becomes evident that Griffith’s rooting interest in all this court intrigue is entirely with Barrymore’s sad, lonely, deformed duke, and we too become increasingly impatient with pampered Emanuella for preferring the dim, handsome brother. The Drums of Love comes close to being a fascinating film – if we weren’t forced to spend so much time with the two lovers.
The difficulty that Griffith and Schenck had in marketing the film is evident in the survival of two different last reels. The plot description above recounts the film’s original story as seen at the Los Angeles and New York premieres. After Cathos is informed by the jester of the liaison between his brother and his wife, they enact a long, heavy finale of guilt, honor, sacrifice, and murder. Emanuella declares “I must die”. Cathos kisses and stabs her, then even more regretfully must stab his brother: “Death before a stain on our honor.” Anticipating another Lionel Barrymore film, Duel in the Sun (...), the two dying lovers crawl toward each other, even while they beg Cathos’ forgiveness, and Struss’ photography gets even mistier. In a strikingly composed and dark coda, Cathos kisses the hands of the two bodies on a bier and walks slowly off, tormented and more hunched than ever. “The closing incident” might be a problem, the New York Times hinted. Variety elaborated that “doubts have been expressed as to whether the beauty values here can overcome the tragic double killing at the finish,” but noted that “Greta [Garbo] passes on in both Flesh and the Devil and Love …”. However, MGM had come around to revising the end of Love (Edmund Goulding, 1927) – an adaptation of Anna Karenina – so that Anna and Vronsky live happily ever after, a version released widely earlier in January 1928. Griffith and Schenck apparently decided to try the same thing. In the revised final reel of The Drums of Love put into general release by late February 1928, the brothers again fight and Emanuella again recognizes “I must die”. However, this time Cathos stabs the ever-intrusive jester, and is mortally wounded in return. There is no record that the revised ending improved the film’s box-office appeal." – Scott Simmon [DWG Project # 618]. - With a film interesting mostly because of its beauty values, it was a pity that only such a bad 16mm print was available. I did not stay and am looking forward to a good print!
Were it not such an extraordinarily dark tale, it would be easier to see this strangely titled film (“drums” of love are nowhere to be found in it) as Griffith’s first “Hollywood” movie. When he had last directed in Los Angeles in 1919, he had still been his own producer. Now he was back with an excellent employee’s contract for what turned out to be the first of four features produced by Joseph Schenck (initially at his appealingly named Art Cinema Corporation) for release through United Artists, of which Schenck was also president. These films would essentially put an end to Griffith’s career.
The structure and style of The Drums of Love are unconventional, and not without interest. After a static scene of the Alvia brothers swearing eternal love for each other at their father’s deathbed, shot with Karl Struss’ recognizably misty diffusion, the perspective switches to a sequence more characteristic of Griffith. The brothers lead troops to victory in a large-scale battle against the Duke of Granada’s forces. It’s the sort of scene, however, that would usually climax a Griffith film, and here it’s tossed off perfunctorily. Most of the rest of the film will rely for spectacle on unconvincing glass-shot effects. Unusual for Griffith too is the fluid mobility of the camera in early scenes, especially of carefree Emanuella at her father’s home. The tone of the rest of the film seems also to weigh down the camera.
The performances are so varied in expressiveness as to lead to a disastrous imbalance in the film as a whole. Top-billed was Mary Philbin, a pleasant-enough actress who was developing an odd career repeatedly playing the lovely consort of deeply deformed but good-hearted men (...) Dolled up in a Goldilocks wig and “recently home from the convent”, she is here paired with Don Alvarado, one of the low-rent Latin Lover replacements after Valentino’s death. His acting range appears so extremely limited that, by the climax of The Drums of Love, his character’s passion and guilt register as a Kuleshov test – an identical expression distinguished only by whether it is edited next to Emanuella or a portrait of his brother: “Sometimes there is a lethargy about his actions,” in the New York Times’s understatement. The human interest in the film arises from the convincing and even endearing performance of Lionel Barrymore as Duke Cathos; it was “this actor’s outstanding camera achievement to date,” in Variety’s verdict. When Emanuella first sees Cathos, he’s shadowed in Expressionist darkness that emphasizes his heavy brow, broad mustache, and hairy hands, but he’s also immediately rather winning in mocking his own hump and letting her know that she’s quite free to withdraw from the marriage “and none will be the worse”. (It’s her father who again forces the union.) Barrymore provides the rare flashes of wit in a film too weighed down by intertitles penned by Griffith with his former publicist Gerrit J. Lloyd; “it would … have been far more satisfactory to include in the captions phrases that were less hard and contained an element of charm,” noted the New York Times. As the un-comic jester, Tully Marshall skulks around melodramatically, as if testing out the character he will use to drool on Gloria Swanson later that year in Erich von Stroheim’s Queen Kelly (1928). It becomes evident that Griffith’s rooting interest in all this court intrigue is entirely with Barrymore’s sad, lonely, deformed duke, and we too become increasingly impatient with pampered Emanuella for preferring the dim, handsome brother. The Drums of Love comes close to being a fascinating film – if we weren’t forced to spend so much time with the two lovers.
The difficulty that Griffith and Schenck had in marketing the film is evident in the survival of two different last reels. The plot description above recounts the film’s original story as seen at the Los Angeles and New York premieres. After Cathos is informed by the jester of the liaison between his brother and his wife, they enact a long, heavy finale of guilt, honor, sacrifice, and murder. Emanuella declares “I must die”. Cathos kisses and stabs her, then even more regretfully must stab his brother: “Death before a stain on our honor.” Anticipating another Lionel Barrymore film, Duel in the Sun (...), the two dying lovers crawl toward each other, even while they beg Cathos’ forgiveness, and Struss’ photography gets even mistier. In a strikingly composed and dark coda, Cathos kisses the hands of the two bodies on a bier and walks slowly off, tormented and more hunched than ever. “The closing incident” might be a problem, the New York Times hinted. Variety elaborated that “doubts have been expressed as to whether the beauty values here can overcome the tragic double killing at the finish,” but noted that “Greta [Garbo] passes on in both Flesh and the Devil and Love …”. However, MGM had come around to revising the end of Love (Edmund Goulding, 1927) – an adaptation of Anna Karenina – so that Anna and Vronsky live happily ever after, a version released widely earlier in January 1928. Griffith and Schenck apparently decided to try the same thing. In the revised final reel of The Drums of Love put into general release by late February 1928, the brothers again fight and Emanuella again recognizes “I must die”. However, this time Cathos stabs the ever-intrusive jester, and is mortally wounded in return. There is no record that the revised ending improved the film’s box-office appeal." – Scott Simmon [DWG Project # 618]. - With a film interesting mostly because of its beauty values, it was a pity that only such a bad 16mm print was available. I did not stay and am looking forward to a good print!
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Sally of the Sawdust
Sirkusilmaa / Cirkusluft. US 1925. PC: D.W. Griffith, Inc. P+D: D.W. Griffith. SC: Forrest Halsey - based on the musical play Poppy (1923) by Dorothy Donnelly. CAST: Carol Dempster (Sally), W.C. Fields (Prof. Eustace McGargle). Print: MoMA, 9615 ft /19 fps/ 135 min, original in English, e-subtitles in Italian, grand piano: Donald Sosin, vocals: Joanna Seaton. Viewed at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, 5 October 2008. - Brilliant print. Donald Sosin inspired at the piano. - Joyce Jesionowski: "a peculiar project for many reasons. Though it is not without pictorial scope, it lacks the grandeur of D.W. Griffith’s great epics. It is a comedy, a form Griffith apparently had consigned to the likes of Mack Sennett and Billy Quirk in the Biograph period. In addition to Griffith’s supposed lack of comic gifts, Sally of the Sawdust relies on the pairing of W.C. Fields, a clown fresh from the Ziegfeld Follies with an actress considered a lesser light in the great firmament of stars Griffith had bequeathed to the cinema. Carol Dempster had first appeared as an extra dancer in Intolerance (1916), and Griffith had been featuring or starring her in his films beginning with The Girl Who Stayed at Home (1919). Yet, of Sally of the Sawdust’s leading lady, Frederick James Smith of Motion Picture Classic admitted: “it was not until Isn’t Life Wonderful that I thought Miss Dempster could act.”
Worst of all, the great director’s personal luster was beginning to tarnish. The box-office success of The Birth of a Nation (1915) turned into notoriety as well as fame, but did not assure Griffith the independence he craved. The failure of the Fine Arts studio portended future difficulties. In 1919, Griffith complained to Frederick James Smith in Motion Picture Classic that because of studio interference at Paramount-Artcraft, “tender little scenes … were mercilessly cut [from A Romance of Happy Valley (1919) and The Girl Who Stayed at Home] to speed up the deluxe program”. Fortunes rose and fell after that, but whatever the reasons Griffith advanced for his perceived “failures”, by December 1924 critical opinion had become so harsh that Photoplay’s critic, James Quirk, was emboldened to exhort the erstwhile master: “the time has come … when you should take an accounting of yourself”. Thus skepticism flavored Griffith’s new association with Paramount from the first.
In fact, critical reception of Sally of the Sawdust was approving – if double-minded. In the same review that noted the improvement in Dempster’s acting in Motion Picture Classic, Smith praised Sally of the Sawdust for being “best in just the field that [sic] Griffith has been weakest – comedy”. In the November 1925 issue of Motion Picture Magazine, Laurence Reid countered that the film was “a most compelling story … in the director’s best manner, one saturated with pointed comedy which is always well-balanced with pathos”. It seems that to the evaluating community Sally of the Sawdust was a typical Griffith offering and a departure from it, at one and the same time.
Indeed, for all its apparent anomalies, Sally of the Sawdust bears the indelible stamp of Griffith’s thinking. Recognizing the need for a solid project to begin his work at Paramount, Griffith turned to a proven stage success. Dorothy Donnelly’s Poppy (1923) would provide the same security as Lottie Blair Parker’s Way Down East had in 1920. Each had enjoyed theatrical successes. But more critically, Poppy’s story could be exploited to express all the dramatic oppositions that typically interested Griffith. Country innocence is compared to city experience, freedom to constraint, respectability to disrepute, intolerance to open-mindedness, probity to love. And at Sally of the Sawdust’s core is the pervasive theme that formed the basis of drama in so many of the Biographs as well as in The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and even Broken Blossoms (1919). The death or absence of a mother results in the relationship of a girl with her father or a male guardian who must raise her to the point of sexual awakening.
The emotional relationship between Sally and her “Pop” is centralized in their collaboration to create the film’s comic set-pieces. The smaller turns, the hobo train ride, and the confusion in the bakery are dominated by W.C. Fields, who exploits each of the situations in small gestures, comic displacements that cascade into larger and larger exaggerations. His body constantly in play, Fields finds the most preposterous postures in a given situation, no matter how small. When he and Sally hitch a ride on a train, for instance, his feet and legs are farcically crabbed up to protect their luggage even as he and Dempster huddle precariously on the train’s open platform. In each situation, Fields finds successions of inanimate objects – hat, cane, suitcase – and portrays them as conspirators against any possibility of situating himself comfortably in the world. His inventions are so integrated into his performance that they become the “natural” expressions of his eccentric character.
Dempster’s comedy is larger, broader, louder. Second banana to Fields in the smaller comic situations, she becomes his two-fisted partner in the film’s large-scale action sequences, the grand mêlée at the circus that resolves the first act of the film, and the race-chase-rescue that resolves the film as a whole. In the first mêlée, she energetically dives into the dirt under a circus wagon and hollers “Hey, Rube!” with a vigor that almost makes her silent voice audible. Boinking her Pop’s attackers with a plank, she generates the heat in the fray while Fields is charged with exposing the comic absurdities of battle. Just before the fight’s resolution, for instance, he fends off his assailants in the now-classic parody of fisticuffs: holding an opponent at bay, in this case hand to the man’s throat, while he swings vain punches in the air. The mounting mayhem is finally resolved by Sally’s arrival with Lucy the elephant. But the interior dynamic of the fight depends on the shifting registers between Dempster’s enthusiastic scrapping and Fields’ comic embroidery. The secondary theme of Sally of the Sawdust is the sexual awakening of a young girl. While the clowning between Dempster and Fields creates a central dramatic pairing, it also certifies the innocence of a relationship between a young girl and an older man who so often finds her arms twined around his neck and her body pressed tight to his own.
In the end, neither the critical appreciation [at the time of its release] nor its successful box-office have lifted Sally of the Sawdust into the pantheon of Griffith’s major films. It does suffer from a sort of flickering interest on Griffith’s part, a lack of engagement in some of its aspects. But Sally of the Sawdust demonstrates conclusively that Griffith’s talents for comedy were better developed than anyone would have thought. More importantly, the maturity of the film’s love scenes, the inventiveness of its unlikely comic pairing, and the liveliness of its final chase sequence suggest that Griffith was fully capable of “taking an accounting” of himself and finding powers that were by no means exhausted." – Joyce Jesionowski. - Remade as Poppy (1936). - I don't consider Griffith a great comedy director, although I like the sense of humour in several of his films. But he directed this good W.C. Fields vehicle, my favourite Griffith comedy.
Worst of all, the great director’s personal luster was beginning to tarnish. The box-office success of The Birth of a Nation (1915) turned into notoriety as well as fame, but did not assure Griffith the independence he craved. The failure of the Fine Arts studio portended future difficulties. In 1919, Griffith complained to Frederick James Smith in Motion Picture Classic that because of studio interference at Paramount-Artcraft, “tender little scenes … were mercilessly cut [from A Romance of Happy Valley (1919) and The Girl Who Stayed at Home] to speed up the deluxe program”. Fortunes rose and fell after that, but whatever the reasons Griffith advanced for his perceived “failures”, by December 1924 critical opinion had become so harsh that Photoplay’s critic, James Quirk, was emboldened to exhort the erstwhile master: “the time has come … when you should take an accounting of yourself”. Thus skepticism flavored Griffith’s new association with Paramount from the first.
In fact, critical reception of Sally of the Sawdust was approving – if double-minded. In the same review that noted the improvement in Dempster’s acting in Motion Picture Classic, Smith praised Sally of the Sawdust for being “best in just the field that [sic] Griffith has been weakest – comedy”. In the November 1925 issue of Motion Picture Magazine, Laurence Reid countered that the film was “a most compelling story … in the director’s best manner, one saturated with pointed comedy which is always well-balanced with pathos”. It seems that to the evaluating community Sally of the Sawdust was a typical Griffith offering and a departure from it, at one and the same time.
Indeed, for all its apparent anomalies, Sally of the Sawdust bears the indelible stamp of Griffith’s thinking. Recognizing the need for a solid project to begin his work at Paramount, Griffith turned to a proven stage success. Dorothy Donnelly’s Poppy (1923) would provide the same security as Lottie Blair Parker’s Way Down East had in 1920. Each had enjoyed theatrical successes. But more critically, Poppy’s story could be exploited to express all the dramatic oppositions that typically interested Griffith. Country innocence is compared to city experience, freedom to constraint, respectability to disrepute, intolerance to open-mindedness, probity to love. And at Sally of the Sawdust’s core is the pervasive theme that formed the basis of drama in so many of the Biographs as well as in The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and even Broken Blossoms (1919). The death or absence of a mother results in the relationship of a girl with her father or a male guardian who must raise her to the point of sexual awakening.
The emotional relationship between Sally and her “Pop” is centralized in their collaboration to create the film’s comic set-pieces. The smaller turns, the hobo train ride, and the confusion in the bakery are dominated by W.C. Fields, who exploits each of the situations in small gestures, comic displacements that cascade into larger and larger exaggerations. His body constantly in play, Fields finds the most preposterous postures in a given situation, no matter how small. When he and Sally hitch a ride on a train, for instance, his feet and legs are farcically crabbed up to protect their luggage even as he and Dempster huddle precariously on the train’s open platform. In each situation, Fields finds successions of inanimate objects – hat, cane, suitcase – and portrays them as conspirators against any possibility of situating himself comfortably in the world. His inventions are so integrated into his performance that they become the “natural” expressions of his eccentric character.
Dempster’s comedy is larger, broader, louder. Second banana to Fields in the smaller comic situations, she becomes his two-fisted partner in the film’s large-scale action sequences, the grand mêlée at the circus that resolves the first act of the film, and the race-chase-rescue that resolves the film as a whole. In the first mêlée, she energetically dives into the dirt under a circus wagon and hollers “Hey, Rube!” with a vigor that almost makes her silent voice audible. Boinking her Pop’s attackers with a plank, she generates the heat in the fray while Fields is charged with exposing the comic absurdities of battle. Just before the fight’s resolution, for instance, he fends off his assailants in the now-classic parody of fisticuffs: holding an opponent at bay, in this case hand to the man’s throat, while he swings vain punches in the air. The mounting mayhem is finally resolved by Sally’s arrival with Lucy the elephant. But the interior dynamic of the fight depends on the shifting registers between Dempster’s enthusiastic scrapping and Fields’ comic embroidery. The secondary theme of Sally of the Sawdust is the sexual awakening of a young girl. While the clowning between Dempster and Fields creates a central dramatic pairing, it also certifies the innocence of a relationship between a young girl and an older man who so often finds her arms twined around his neck and her body pressed tight to his own.
In the end, neither the critical appreciation [at the time of its release] nor its successful box-office have lifted Sally of the Sawdust into the pantheon of Griffith’s major films. It does suffer from a sort of flickering interest on Griffith’s part, a lack of engagement in some of its aspects. But Sally of the Sawdust demonstrates conclusively that Griffith’s talents for comedy were better developed than anyone would have thought. More importantly, the maturity of the film’s love scenes, the inventiveness of its unlikely comic pairing, and the liveliness of its final chase sequence suggest that Griffith was fully capable of “taking an accounting” of himself and finding powers that were by no means exhausted." – Joyce Jesionowski. - Remade as Poppy (1936). - I don't consider Griffith a great comedy director, although I like the sense of humour in several of his films. But he directed this good W.C. Fields vehicle, my favourite Griffith comedy.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Cento anni fà: i film del 1908: USA 1908 - Biograph prima e dopo Griffith
Curator: Tom Gunning. Viewed in Bologna, Lumière 1, 30 June 2008. Piano: Gabriel Thibaudeau.
Old Isaacs the Pawnbroker. US 1908. PC: Biograph. SC: D.W. Griffith. 274 m /16 fps/ 15 min. Print: MoMA. - Against the racial stereotype: a kindly Jewish pawnbroker helps a little girl and her mother.
Bobby's Kodak. US 1908. PC: Biograph. Starring Bobby Harron. 183 m /20 fps/ 8 min. Print: MoMA. - The rascal takes embarrassing snapshots and shows them in the family and office viewing.
The Adventures of Dollie. US 1908. PC: Biograph. D: Griffith. 235 m /16 fps/ 13 min. Print: LoC. - The Gypsies steal the little daughter, who barely survives in the barrel that gets into the river and the waterfall.
The Guerrilla. US 1908. PC: Biograph. D: Griffith. 300 m /16 fps/ 16 min. Print: LoC & Cineteca Nazionale. - DWG's first Civil War film.
After Many Years. US 1908. PC: Biograph. D: Griffith. 340 m /16 fps/ 18 min. Print: LoC. - DWG's first adaptation of Tennyson's Enoch Arden on film.
Old Isaacs the Pawnbroker. US 1908. PC: Biograph. SC: D.W. Griffith. 274 m /16 fps/ 15 min. Print: MoMA. - Against the racial stereotype: a kindly Jewish pawnbroker helps a little girl and her mother.
Bobby's Kodak. US 1908. PC: Biograph. Starring Bobby Harron. 183 m /20 fps/ 8 min. Print: MoMA. - The rascal takes embarrassing snapshots and shows them in the family and office viewing.
The Adventures of Dollie. US 1908. PC: Biograph. D: Griffith. 235 m /16 fps/ 13 min. Print: LoC. - The Gypsies steal the little daughter, who barely survives in the barrel that gets into the river and the waterfall.
The Guerrilla. US 1908. PC: Biograph. D: Griffith. 300 m /16 fps/ 16 min. Print: LoC & Cineteca Nazionale. - DWG's first Civil War film.
After Many Years. US 1908. PC: Biograph. D: Griffith. 340 m /16 fps/ 18 min. Print: LoC. - DWG's first adaptation of Tennyson's Enoch Arden on film.
Saturday, October 18, 1997
A Corner In Wheat
/ / US / 1909 / Griffith, D.W. / / drama
Corner In Wheat, A. PC: Biograph. D: D.W. Griffith. CAST: James Kirkwood, Linda Arvidson, Frank Powell. 292 m /15 fps/ 17’. Münchner Filmmuseum print. Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, on Saturday, 18 October 1997. **** The title means wheat monopoly. As I knew previously only a 16mm paper print transfer of the film, the discovery was startling. Firstly, in contrast to the clumsy and pedestrian Griffiths of only a year earlier. Secondly, in comparison to any modern filmmaking. The laconic force, the immediacy, the boldness of the idea. Lastly, there is the theme of exploitation: the power of the grain speculators versus the suffering of the have-nots.
Saturday, October 11, 1997
The Birth of a Nation
011659 / 16 / US / 1915 / Griffith, D.W. / / historical drama
Birth of a Nation, The / Kansakunnan synty. PC: David W. Griffith Corporation. P+D+SC: D.W. Griffith. M: Joseph Carl Breil. CAST: Henry B. Walthall, Robert Harron, Lillian Gish, Miriam Cooper, Mae Marsh. Pordenone, Cinema Verdi, Saturday 11 October 1997. Restored print based on the 1921 re-release by Photoplay Productions (David Gill, Kevin Brownlow, Patrick Stanbury). 3454 m /16 fps/ 187’. Tinted print. Live music based on the original score arranged and conducted by John Lanchbery, performed by Ljubljana Camerata Labacensis Orchestra. Screening dedicated to David Gill (1928 - 1997). **** ??!! The most ambivalent and embarrassing of the film classics has lost none of its power to move or to offend. I was previously familiar only with the 3280 m version of the film’s last Finnish re-release of 1964 which at sound speed ran one hour faster than this screening. To be cherished: the wonderful fluidity, the perfect blend of sound and vision, music marvellously restored and amended by John Lanchbery. It still probably is the highest grossing film of all time, if the value of the dollar is adjusted. And the most influential, besides Citizen Kane: participation in it changed the lives of John Ford, Raoul Walsh, and Erich von Stroheim, among others. For the first time I could really appreciate the majesty of the first part dedicated to the Civil War. The second part focusing on the Ku Klux Klan became more serious, too, because of the high standards of the presentation. Previously, in the Finnish release version, I found the racism merely stupid. Now I found the blood-thirsty aggressiveness as vicious as anything from Nazi Germany. I refused to applaud. No wonder The Birth of a Nation has not been exhibited in public since the 1940s in Anglo-Saxon countries. It may only be shown on special occasions in an anti-racist context.
The Griffith Project Part I: The Apprenticeship (1907 - 1908)
/ / US / 1907-1908 / Griffith, D.W. / / melodrama
The first ever complete D.W. Griffith retrospective was launched in Pordenone in 1997 and is likely to take ten years to be finished. The majority of Griffith’s over 500 films survive, but many have not been generally available since their release. Most of his Biograph shorts are preserved at the Library of Congress’ paper print collection. The paper print versions are often pre-release material, and shown in 16mm film transfer prints do not do justice to the photographic quality of the originals. Sometimes the scenes were deposited in camera negative order, making the plot impossible to follow.
It was an invaluable privilege to see these films of apprenticeship - ”Griffith before Griffith”. If he would have died having made only these films, he would be forgotten today. Seeing these films was like witnessing a baby’s first steps. The sketches and vignettes cover a wide range. There is hardly any sense of film form, storytelling, or cinematic performance. Instead, we have condensed melodramatic plots performed at breakneck speed, and telegraphed by high histrionics. In the rare 35mm prints, there is true photogenic beauty. Interestingly, the very first film directed by DWG, The Adventures of Dollie, is one of the most charming of the whole, since a beautiful print is available. It is fittingly symbolic that it is the story of a little child. Other most memorable films include Edgar Allan Poe: a clumsy but deeply felt vignette. And The Guerrilla, a visually memorable Civil War scene. DWG’s comedies are far from the masters.
Main actors in the films viewed include Linda Arvidson, Florence Lawrence, D.W. Griffith, and Mack Sennett.
The Griffith Project Part I covered the first 94 films in which DWG was active as a screenwriter, actor, or director. They all survive in some form. They were shot in one to three days. The duration ranges between 7-15’. I saw 68 of them. Most were screened at Ridotto del Verdi, Pordenone, all with piano accompaniment, all at 15 fps, 12-18 October, 1997.
The following films were produced by Biograph, and they were screened in Library of Congress prints, in 16mm, without titles and toning and are directed by DWG, unless otherwise indicated.
Professional Jealousy (1907) 35mm, MOMA, fine definition. D: Wallace McCutcheon. As an extra. DWG # 1
Falsely Accused! (1907) 35mm, MOMA, titles. D: Wallace McCutcheon. In a small role. DWG # 2
Rescued From An Eagle’s Nest (1908) PC: Edison. 35mm, MOMA, fine definition, titles. D: J. Searle Dawley. As male lead. DWG # 3
Cupid’s Pranks (1908) PC: Edison. 35mm, MOMA, titles. D: J. Searle Dawley. As an extra. DWG # 5
Princess In The Vase, The (1908) As male lead. D: Wallace McCutcheon. DWG # 6
Egyptian Princess, The (1908) Unreleased version of above. MOMA. Titles. DWG # 6
Her First Adventure (1908) 35mm, MOMA. D: Wallace McCutcheon. As male lead. DWG # 8
Old Isaacs, The Pawnbroker (1908) MOMA, from damaged source. D: Wallace McCutcheon. Screenwriter, actor. DWG # 10
At The Crossroads Of Life (1908) 35mm, MOMA, titles. D: Wallace McCutcheon. Screenwriter, actor. DWG # 24
Adventures Of Dollie, The (1908) 35mm, fine definition. DWG # 27 *
Fight For Freedom, The (1908) 35mm. DWG # 29
Redman and the Child, The (1908) 35mm. DWG # 30
For Love Of Gold (1908) From Jack London’s ”Just Meat”. DWG # 37
Fatal Hour, The (1908) DWG # 38
Balked At The Altar (1908). Comedy. DWG # 39
For A Wife’s Honor (1908) DWG # 40
Girl And The Outlaw, The (1908) Western. DWG # 41
Monday Morning In A Coney Island Police Court (1908) Comedy. DWG # 42
Red Girl, The (1908) Western. DWG # 43
Behind The Scenes (1908) DWG # 44
Heart of O Yama, The (1908) DWG # 45
Betrayed By A Handprint (1908) Detective story. DWG # 46.
Where The Breakers Roar (1908) DWG # 47
Smoked Husband, A (1908) Comedy. DWG # 48
Zulu’s Heart, The (1908) DWG # 49
Vaquero’s Vow, The (1908) DWG # 50
Father Gets In The Game (1908) Comedy. DWG # 51
Barbarian, Ingomar, The (1908) DWG # 52
Planter’s Wife, The (1908) Story resembles the Finnish classic Juha. DWG # 53
Devil, The (1908) From Ferenc Molnar’s The Devil. DWG # 54
Stolen Jewels, The (1908) DWG # 55
Mr. Jones At The Ball (1908) Comedy. DWG # 56
Romance Of A Jewess (1908) DWG # 57
Call Of The Wild, The (1908) Western. DWG # 58
Concealing A Burglar (1908) DWG # 59
Woman’s Way, A (1908) Scenes out of order. DWG # 60
Taming Of The Shrew, The (1908). Based on Shakespeare, Florence Lawrence as Kate. DWG # 61
After Many Years (1908). Based on Tennyson’s poem ”Enoch Arden”. DWG # 62
Pirate’s Gold, The (1908) DWG # 63
Guerrilla, The (1908) Civil War. 35 mm, from paper print. DWG # 64
Guerrilla, The (1908) Civil War. 35 mm, from film print, MOMA. Titles. DWG # 64 *
Guerrilla, The (1908) Civil War. 35 mm, German release version. German titles. DWG # 64
Song of the Shirt, The (1908) From Thomas Hood’s poem. DWG # 65
Curtain Pole, The (1908) Comedy starring Mack Sennett. DWG # 66
Mrs. Jones Entertains (1908) Comedy. DWG # 67
Ingrate, The (1908) DWG # 68
Feud and the Turkey, The (1908) Scenes out of order. DWG # 69
Valet’s Wife, The (1908) Comedy. Scenes out of order. DWG # 71
Clubman and the Tramp, The (1908). Comedy: ”tantalizing annoyance of having a double”. DWG # 72
Money Mad (1908) Based on Jack London’s ”Just Meat”. DWG # 73
One Touch of Nature (1908) Orphan child brings mother to sanity. DWG # 74
Awful Moment, An (1908) Gypsy woman’s revenge on judge. Scenes out of order. DWG # 75
Test of Friendship, The (1908). Millionaire lies having gone bankrupt. Scenes out of order. DWG # 76
Helping Hand, The (1908) At the altar a poor girl is about to be exposed as a whore. DWG # 77
Maniac Cook, The (1908) The kitchen maid goes mad and is about to roast a baby. DWG # 78
Christmas Burglars, The (1908) 35mm from paper print, unstable image. Pawnbroker with a heart of gold. DWG # 79
Wreath In Time, A (1908) Comedy starring Mack Sennett and resembling Sons of the Desert. DWG # 80
Honor of Thieves, The (1908) Pawnbroker’s daughter beguiled into eloping with smooth-talking thief. DWG # 81
Rural Elopement, A (1908) DWG # 82
Joneses Have Amateur Theatricals, The (1908) Comedy. DWG # 83
Sacrifice, The (1908) DWG # 84
Criminal Hypnotist, The (1908) DWG # 85
Edgar Allen Poe (1908). ”Allan” misspelled in title. Based on ”The Raven”. 35mm, MOMA. DWG # 86
Mr. Jones Has A Card Party (1908). Comedy. DWG # 87
Roue’s Heart, The (1908) Blind sculptress meets French roue. DWG # 88
Welcome Burglar, The (1908) Ex-husband shot as a burglar. DWG # 89
Hindoo Dagger, The (1908) DWG # 90
Tragic Love (1908) DWG # 91
Love Finds A Way (1908) Costume comedy in the court of Louis XIII. DWG # 92
Girls and Daddy, The (1908) Blatant racism. Scenes out of order. DWG # 93
Salvation Army Lass, The (1908) ”God Is My Light”. DWG # 94
The first ever complete D.W. Griffith retrospective was launched in Pordenone in 1997 and is likely to take ten years to be finished. The majority of Griffith’s over 500 films survive, but many have not been generally available since their release. Most of his Biograph shorts are preserved at the Library of Congress’ paper print collection. The paper print versions are often pre-release material, and shown in 16mm film transfer prints do not do justice to the photographic quality of the originals. Sometimes the scenes were deposited in camera negative order, making the plot impossible to follow.
It was an invaluable privilege to see these films of apprenticeship - ”Griffith before Griffith”. If he would have died having made only these films, he would be forgotten today. Seeing these films was like witnessing a baby’s first steps. The sketches and vignettes cover a wide range. There is hardly any sense of film form, storytelling, or cinematic performance. Instead, we have condensed melodramatic plots performed at breakneck speed, and telegraphed by high histrionics. In the rare 35mm prints, there is true photogenic beauty. Interestingly, the very first film directed by DWG, The Adventures of Dollie, is one of the most charming of the whole, since a beautiful print is available. It is fittingly symbolic that it is the story of a little child. Other most memorable films include Edgar Allan Poe: a clumsy but deeply felt vignette. And The Guerrilla, a visually memorable Civil War scene. DWG’s comedies are far from the masters.
Main actors in the films viewed include Linda Arvidson, Florence Lawrence, D.W. Griffith, and Mack Sennett.
The Griffith Project Part I covered the first 94 films in which DWG was active as a screenwriter, actor, or director. They all survive in some form. They were shot in one to three days. The duration ranges between 7-15’. I saw 68 of them. Most were screened at Ridotto del Verdi, Pordenone, all with piano accompaniment, all at 15 fps, 12-18 October, 1997.
The following films were produced by Biograph, and they were screened in Library of Congress prints, in 16mm, without titles and toning and are directed by DWG, unless otherwise indicated.
Professional Jealousy (1907) 35mm, MOMA, fine definition. D: Wallace McCutcheon. As an extra. DWG # 1
Falsely Accused! (1907) 35mm, MOMA, titles. D: Wallace McCutcheon. In a small role. DWG # 2
Rescued From An Eagle’s Nest (1908) PC: Edison. 35mm, MOMA, fine definition, titles. D: J. Searle Dawley. As male lead. DWG # 3
Cupid’s Pranks (1908) PC: Edison. 35mm, MOMA, titles. D: J. Searle Dawley. As an extra. DWG # 5
Princess In The Vase, The (1908) As male lead. D: Wallace McCutcheon. DWG # 6
Egyptian Princess, The (1908) Unreleased version of above. MOMA. Titles. DWG # 6
Her First Adventure (1908) 35mm, MOMA. D: Wallace McCutcheon. As male lead. DWG # 8
Old Isaacs, The Pawnbroker (1908) MOMA, from damaged source. D: Wallace McCutcheon. Screenwriter, actor. DWG # 10
At The Crossroads Of Life (1908) 35mm, MOMA, titles. D: Wallace McCutcheon. Screenwriter, actor. DWG # 24
Adventures Of Dollie, The (1908) 35mm, fine definition. DWG # 27 *
Fight For Freedom, The (1908) 35mm. DWG # 29
Redman and the Child, The (1908) 35mm. DWG # 30
For Love Of Gold (1908) From Jack London’s ”Just Meat”. DWG # 37
Fatal Hour, The (1908) DWG # 38
Balked At The Altar (1908). Comedy. DWG # 39
For A Wife’s Honor (1908) DWG # 40
Girl And The Outlaw, The (1908) Western. DWG # 41
Monday Morning In A Coney Island Police Court (1908) Comedy. DWG # 42
Red Girl, The (1908) Western. DWG # 43
Behind The Scenes (1908) DWG # 44
Heart of O Yama, The (1908) DWG # 45
Betrayed By A Handprint (1908) Detective story. DWG # 46.
Where The Breakers Roar (1908) DWG # 47
Smoked Husband, A (1908) Comedy. DWG # 48
Zulu’s Heart, The (1908) DWG # 49
Vaquero’s Vow, The (1908) DWG # 50
Father Gets In The Game (1908) Comedy. DWG # 51
Barbarian, Ingomar, The (1908) DWG # 52
Planter’s Wife, The (1908) Story resembles the Finnish classic Juha. DWG # 53
Devil, The (1908) From Ferenc Molnar’s The Devil. DWG # 54
Stolen Jewels, The (1908) DWG # 55
Mr. Jones At The Ball (1908) Comedy. DWG # 56
Romance Of A Jewess (1908) DWG # 57
Call Of The Wild, The (1908) Western. DWG # 58
Concealing A Burglar (1908) DWG # 59
Woman’s Way, A (1908) Scenes out of order. DWG # 60
Taming Of The Shrew, The (1908). Based on Shakespeare, Florence Lawrence as Kate. DWG # 61
After Many Years (1908). Based on Tennyson’s poem ”Enoch Arden”. DWG # 62
Pirate’s Gold, The (1908) DWG # 63
Guerrilla, The (1908) Civil War. 35 mm, from paper print. DWG # 64
Guerrilla, The (1908) Civil War. 35 mm, from film print, MOMA. Titles. DWG # 64 *
Guerrilla, The (1908) Civil War. 35 mm, German release version. German titles. DWG # 64
Song of the Shirt, The (1908) From Thomas Hood’s poem. DWG # 65
Curtain Pole, The (1908) Comedy starring Mack Sennett. DWG # 66
Mrs. Jones Entertains (1908) Comedy. DWG # 67
Ingrate, The (1908) DWG # 68
Feud and the Turkey, The (1908) Scenes out of order. DWG # 69
Valet’s Wife, The (1908) Comedy. Scenes out of order. DWG # 71
Clubman and the Tramp, The (1908). Comedy: ”tantalizing annoyance of having a double”. DWG # 72
Money Mad (1908) Based on Jack London’s ”Just Meat”. DWG # 73
One Touch of Nature (1908) Orphan child brings mother to sanity. DWG # 74
Awful Moment, An (1908) Gypsy woman’s revenge on judge. Scenes out of order. DWG # 75
Test of Friendship, The (1908). Millionaire lies having gone bankrupt. Scenes out of order. DWG # 76
Helping Hand, The (1908) At the altar a poor girl is about to be exposed as a whore. DWG # 77
Maniac Cook, The (1908) The kitchen maid goes mad and is about to roast a baby. DWG # 78
Christmas Burglars, The (1908) 35mm from paper print, unstable image. Pawnbroker with a heart of gold. DWG # 79
Wreath In Time, A (1908) Comedy starring Mack Sennett and resembling Sons of the Desert. DWG # 80
Honor of Thieves, The (1908) Pawnbroker’s daughter beguiled into eloping with smooth-talking thief. DWG # 81
Rural Elopement, A (1908) DWG # 82
Joneses Have Amateur Theatricals, The (1908) Comedy. DWG # 83
Sacrifice, The (1908) DWG # 84
Criminal Hypnotist, The (1908) DWG # 85
Edgar Allen Poe (1908). ”Allan” misspelled in title. Based on ”The Raven”. 35mm, MOMA. DWG # 86
Mr. Jones Has A Card Party (1908). Comedy. DWG # 87
Roue’s Heart, The (1908) Blind sculptress meets French roue. DWG # 88
Welcome Burglar, The (1908) Ex-husband shot as a burglar. DWG # 89
Hindoo Dagger, The (1908) DWG # 90
Tragic Love (1908) DWG # 91
Love Finds A Way (1908) Costume comedy in the court of Louis XIII. DWG # 92
Girls and Daddy, The (1908) Blatant racism. Scenes out of order. DWG # 93
Salvation Army Lass, The (1908) ”God Is My Light”. DWG # 94
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