A Corner in Wheat

A Corner in Wheat (1909) - This is one of Griffith’s most famous early films, and if it is not a profound masterpiece, it is very, very close. Here, still using very few individual shots (25, in this case), and with still no camera movement, Griffith manages to tell a vast fable of the inequality of man. The plot is very simple - a venture capitalist buys up the entire market on wheat and becomes outrageously wealthy, while the common people, including the farmers who produce the crop, go hungry. In an ironic deux ex machina, the "Wheat King" stumbles into his own mill, where he is buried alive by the downpouring grain which is the source of his corrupt wealth. This does not resolve the situation, as the farmers go on hungrily, as helpless as before.
The amazing thing about A Corner in Wheat is the vast panorama of the extremes of social classes, and the pungent use of cross-cut editing to highlight not only the differences, but to establish a mental relationship of cause and effect. For such simple elements, this is a very powerful and potent film. What makes the movie so strong is the intensity and the realism of the individual shots. The inherent power that emanates from Griffith’s polished imagery is the very stuff of the drama itself. It is the daring and audacity in the few, but powerful jump cuts from which the narrative derives its power, however. This might be the best narrative film ever made thus far - it is certainly the best I have ever seen up until this period.

I think that this is one film that would benefit extremely from a shot-by-shot analysis, which can be done in a brief space, as there are so few shots. But the description of their content is needed to pour all of the intensity of this vision into focus, and the simplicity of the cuts can be illustrated to describe the film’s ultimate power.

SHOT 1 - Immediately after the title card, we cut to a shot that is already replete with poetic realism. It is a medium-shot composition of three people: in the center a farmer, on our left, his wife, and background right, his old father. The farmer bends over slowly, placing his hands three times in the sack of seeds before him, and letting the precious gifts of life slide through his fingers, back into the sack. There is a dignified sense of noble and fatalistic poverty of this family. The farmer (James Kirkwood) has a tragic, though somehow distinctly American "everyman" characer about him, and something about the pathos of his stance, the far-off look in his eyes, suggests a Lincolnesque dignity, while simultaneously presaging the iconic vision of Henry Fonda’s "Tom Joad." The wife (Linda Avidson) stares at him with a sense of fatalism. Finally, he picks up the heavy bag and begins his march forward into the field, followed by his old father (W. Chrystie Miller), who lifts his own sack for the millionth time and painfully hobbles along after him. There is something extraordinarily iconic about this family portrait, something that suggests eternal endurance in the face of endless work and difficulty.

SHOT 2 - We cut to a long, deep shot of the edge of the field where the farmer and his father are walking slowly, sewing the seeds. Griffith lets the scene proceed until the two men finally reach us, pass beyond the frame, then re-enter, following their long steps back down the next row. Following them are two horses pulling a plow and a young man (farmhand or son?) tugging onto the reins behind them. The horses turn as well, and follow the men before them. Griffith is brave to let this scene go on so long, for the point that it demonstrates is how long this backbreaking work will take the men, as we can see that the field is deep, but we have no idea how wide it is - the field is cut off by the screen on the left side, and conceivable this labor might go on forever. It is Griffith’s patience, here, that focuses our sense of time and the difficulty of agriculture.

SHOT 3 - A title card announces: "THE WHEAT KING: ENGINEERING THE GREAT CORNER. We cut immediately to a completely different world. An immaculately dressed, powerful looking man sits augustly in his elegant office, puffing on a cigar thoughtfully. Four well-heeled young men stand close by, waiting on his service. This is the "Wheat King," actor Frank Powell (later a director himself) in an energetic, muscular performance that will give the film its central evil dynamism, and its life. The Wheat King rises, snaps his arm with his new idea, then quickly issues instructions to each of his assistants, after which he follows them out. One of the great keys to the success of A Corner in Wheat is due to this performance, and Griffith’s vision of the villain as not a surly villainous caricature, but such an impressive portrayal of a true-to-life, ambitious, strong-willed capitalist. This is definitely a man who would be respectfully approved of on Wall Street.

SHOT 4 - A title card displays the ironic declaration: IN THE WHEAT PIT: THE FINAL THRESHING," and we abruptly cut to the frantic mad jostling of speculators fighting to outbid one another. This is a depiction of the human being as animal, fighting claw to claw, as one might say, each for himself. Griffith allows this jostling, multi-leveled composition clamor for (or against) itself for some time, before the solidly powerful entry of the Wheat King enters and immediately outbids all others, appropriating what we presume to be the entire wheat crop all to himself, presumably while his assistants are doing the same thing at other speculator’s dens. Like a lion, he majestically asserts his dominance, then exits, leaving the the remainder of the pit in a shocked shambles. One man passes, presumably ruined, passes out on the floor, and others try to help him up.

SHOT 5 - A title card asserts: "HIS ANSWER TO THE RUINED MAN’S PLEA - ‘GET IT WHERE I GOT IT.’ We cut back to the Wheat King’s office, where he enters beaming, along with his assistants, who each shake his hand in congratulations. The Ruined Man enters and begs with the Wheat King for assistance. The Wheat King simply smiles back at him for a moment, then grabs him angrily by the collar, telling him to get out. He leaves, and the businessman go back to their congratulatory celebration. The Wheat King is clearly disgusted by the pleading man, and the subtext seems to suggest that he assumes that all is fair in business - he has simply won by dint of his power of imagination. If everyone were as wisely aggressive as him, they could do the same. The sense of the "unlevel playing field" where the wealthiest have all the advantages simply does not occur to him - presumably, as Griffith suggests, as it does not to any typical capitalist.

SHOT 6 - A title card announces: "THE GOLD OF THE WHEAT." We cut to a fabulously arrayed table in a posh parlor, where elegantly arrayed men and women cavort carelessly and happily, while being served wine by three stately waiters. The Wheat King charges in happily, while everyone stands excitedly and cheers him, offering him a toast. He takes a glass of presumably very expensive claret and drinks back to their salute. Obviously, the Wheat King is not a selfish man - he has no qualms about lavishing ostentatiously on his young, beautiful and wealthy friends.

SHOT 7 - The title card contrasts with the previous one: "THE CHAFF OF THE WHEAT." Here is a poor bakery with loaves of bread stacked on a counter. A woman (the baker?) hovers in the background, a boy sweeps up, while the man behind the counter gestures to a prospective customer a sign which reads, "Owing to the advance in the price of flour the usual 5¢ loaf is now 10¢. The man pays the extra nickel and departs with his loaf. A young woman enters and is told the same. Finally, The Farmer’s Wife, with a little girl in tow (Gladys Egan from The Adventures of Dollie!) enters, and when told of the price increase, does not have the money to pay the inflated price, so she leaves the store, in a state of shock with her hungry little daughter.

SHOT 8 - The farmers’ family hungry despair is contrasted by the Wheat King’s opulence, in a cut back to his splendid banquet table, filled with food, wine, and beautiful, happy young men and women. The successful Wheat King smiles and toasts his wife, sitting across from him.

SHOT 9 - The contrast is deepened by a cut back to the bakery, where a still shot shows a line of people staring hungrily at the bread table. These jump cuts not only connect in the viewer’s mind the difference between the rich and the poor, but actually prompt an identification of cause and effect between one and the other. Griffith shows he understands thoroughly the psychological implications of film language.

SHOT 10 - After the banquet, the Wheat King stands triumphantly smoking a cigar by the table, surrounded by three fawning females. He invites everyone in the room to leave, presumably to come look at something.

SHOT 11 - The farmer’s wife sits forlornly, her little daughter at her side, staring into space hopelessly. They are anchored to the right side of the screen, in front of a haystack that dominates the composition, and, to the left, an old wagon. The farmer and his father enter from the left, and she rises to greet them, expectantly. The farmer stops before her, then shows her his empty pockets. She tearfully shakes her head at him, and he shakes his head back sadly in response. He has been unable to procure any more money for bread. They both stare at the ground, helpless and lost, as the grandfather ambles impotently out of the frame.

SHOT 12 - A title card reveals "THE HIGH PRICE CUTS DOWN THE BREAD FUND." A cut back to the line of SHOT 9, where the people file by, getting their loaves of bread at the inflated price. Soon, the last loaf is sold. The baker explains the situation to a poor and desperate-looking man, who finally accepts the painful truth, then saunters sadly off, the rest of the line moving resignedly after him, no bread to be had.

SHOT 13 - A title card announces "A VISIT TO THE ELEVATORS." The Wheat King sits in his office, which is quickly invaded by his wife, followed by the beautiful young ladies and the men who had been at the banquet. He rises to greet them, and they all happly exit into the next room.

SHOT 14 - We cut to an interior shot of the mill, where a worker stands on an upper level (in front of what is obviously a painted backdrop of the rest of the mill). He is looking down into what appears to be a pit down below. Another worker ascends the stairs behind him, and taps him on the shoulder. He moves to the side, while the Wheat King enters in fine clothes and hat, bringing his admiring entourage up behind him. Two women joyfully appear, looking about. A worker steps forward and puts out his hands to warn them of the precipice in front of them.

SHOT 15 - Cut to a large wooden bin in which the wheat is pouring after threshing from an automated elevator. The quickness of the cut tells us very economically that this is fall the worker is warning the ladies of. The wheat falls with a fury, filling the shaft.

SHOT 16 - The women are urged back again by the worker. Everyone strains to see the sight down below, but the workmen prudently urge the group on around a corner to (presumably) a safer place, and they begin exiting the frame to the right. The Wheat King stands at the back of the group, when suddenly one of his assistants emerges excitedly up the steps and reaches out to him. He has a telegram, which he shows to him, as the others continue to move off.

SHOT 17 - We read the telegram from the Wheat King’s accountant, which states, "YOU HAVE CONTROL OF THE ENTIRE MARKET OF THE WORLD. YESTERDAY ADDED $4,000,000 TO YOUR FORTUNE."

SHOT 18 - We return to the previous scene. The Wheat King exult excitedly. His wife, still there, with another woman ask what the message is, and he gestures them to go on with the others, which they do. The assistant departs back down the stairs, and the Wheat King is left alone. He smiles and triumphantly raises his fist, when suddenly, he loses his balance and begins to topple backward, over the precipice.

SHOT 19 - The Wheat King’s helpless, flailing body crashes into the wheat bin, where the grain is being poured upon him relentlessly. He wriggles violently, trying to move about, but the force and rush of the grain push him relentlessly down, covering him.

SHOT 20 - A cut back to the bakery reveals a policemen with a billy club talking to the baker assuringly. The policemen exits. Suddenly, a crowd - men, women and children - storms angrily, desperately, into the bakery and begin shouting to the baker, demanding bread. The baker attempts to convince them that he has none, but the crowd will not back off. Suddenly, the policeman runs back in and strikes one of the men on the head. Another policeman pulls his gun on the mob, and they freeze.

SHOT 21 - Back in the grain bin, the Wheat King is nearly covered by the pouring grain, with only his hand visible from under the massive pile. It wriggles violently, helplessly, until it finally ceases movement and is covered completely. The Wheat King is dead, destroyed by his own wealth, the victim of his own greed.

SHOT 22 - Back at the place where he fell, the workers re-enter with the visitors. One workman stands before the threshold’s edge, holding his arms out, to protect them from a fall, and the visitors begin exiting the way they came in, down the steps to the left. They are gone, leaving the two workmen together alone.

SHOT 23 - The assistant is back at the office, when the Wheat King’s wife enters, along with the others. They notice that he did not return with them, become worried, then hurriedly exit the room to go back and look for him.

SHOT 24 - Cut to the two workman at the precipice in the mill, plus a third one. They are hauling something up from the grain pit with a rope. The wife and the group return as the men finish hauling up their burden - the corpse of the dead Wheat King. The assistant attempts to revive him, but to no avail. The wife crumples in tears and despair and falls upon her dead husband’s bosom. The others turn away, respectfully, shocked and overcome.

SHOT 25 - We return to the wheat field, as in SHOT 2. The lone figure of the farmer is walking slowly towards us in the field, once again sewing his seeds. He walks tiredly, endlessly trudging. When he reaches us in mid-shot, he stops, looks back at all that he has left to do and sighs. He slowly, turns and begins the long walk back down the next row, tossing seeds from his sack as he goes. As he continues, moving further from us, getting smaller, the edges of the frame grow dark. The American Biograph logo appears, and the film is over.

We are confronted with masses of emotionally charged imagery here, rife with potential, yet conflicted meanings. The film stands, immaculately conceived, fully realized, but left with so many open questions that I think we must conclude that here, by 1909, David Wark Griffith was unquestionably producing art.

I want to linger first on certain singular images - images on which Griffith lingers and carefully transforms into aesthetic images. First, there are the shots of the farmer and his family in the field. The light, the faces, the unhurried fatalistic motions send out a poignant vision of the eternal - and uncertain - pact of mankind with the land. There is no romanticization here, nor is there extreme melodrama. These shots are shocking in their aesthetic clarity, as Griffith seems to intuitively anticipates the great poetic realism that we will associate with Jean Renoir some thirty years later. Griffith has discovered the essence of the shot as a sense of poetry - endlessly packed with the potential for dramatic and contemplative content. There is no hurry here - no sense that he must hurry and get to the plot. Here he displays a uniquely new (as far as I am aware) sense of mastery of the form. He has such confidence in his ability to effectively tell this story, that he allows no propulsion to pull him away from the extraordinary details with which he wishes to invest his images. That is startling enough.

Even bolder is Griffith’s presumptions at editing - not only between different, contrasting characters and actions, but completely different worlds, where not only contrast is established, but cause and effect. We simultaneously follow two different stories of two social classes, both affected by one action.

The most intense, climactic scene of the film, the Wheat King’s furious struggle for life while being buried under his own grain, is not a result of a cause, however. This is Griffith’s poetic license. Griffith, the director, acts as God here, ironically punishing the villain for his own greed and insensitivity. Now this is romanticization. And it is also what keeps A Corner in Wheat squarely in the realm of melodrama, despite all of its social realist leanings.

For it is quite easy (and natural) to read A Corner in Wheat as an attack on capitalism. What else can one say about the repeated contrasts between the ostentatiousness of the rich and their blissful ignorance of those who suffer, contrasted continually with the broken lives of the poor who subsidize their opulent lifestyle?

At first, this question confused me. I knew D.W. Griffith was not a socialist - but here he is, producing as dialectically constructed a film as later would the Soviet master Sergei Eisenstein. Here is another example of what I refer to as D.W. Griffith’s fatal flaw as an artist - his naivety. For as much evidence as he produces on the screen that it is the inherent inequality of an economic system that allows one class to ruthlessly exploit the other, amazingly Griffith does not seem to come to this conclusion. His judgement? The real evil is "greed."

And yet how can one argue otherwise? In truth, Griffith is stating a universal human fact. Ultimately, it is greed that is the underlying sin of inequality. But after painstakingly constructing an elaborate, yet structurally simple (Marxianly simple!) representation of a system of institutionalized inequity, Griffith does not locate the fault in that system itself. Instead, he places the blame squarely on an individual. Everything is the Wheat King’s fault. Even with all the other greedy, animalistic speculators in the pit, the Wheat King is the villain.

I come to this conclusion based upon the deus ex machina that leads to the Wheat King’s horrific, ironic death. If this were a true piece of socialist realism, the poor and oppressed might well rise up, attack the Wheat King, and throw him in the pit. But nothing like this even remotely occurs in the film. Even the brief, desperate uprising that occurs in the bakery is quickly put down by the police. The underclass must accept their situation stoically. It is Griffith’s judgement of the frailty of human character that is to blame, not economics.

It is immensely to his credit, both as an artist and as a human being, that Griffith not only recognized the unfairness in socio-economic relationships in the United States of 1909, but was bold enough to put them up there on the screen. But Griffith, the sentimentalist, we think, finds the easy way out of the dilemma. For us, Griffith’s dramatic solution, while still melodramatically powerful, is insufficient to resolve the massive problem he has painted.

If A Corner in Wheat is, ultimately, dramatically unsatisfactory, it is nevertheless a work of exquisitely crafted beauty. As mentioned before, the strength of the images, the dynamism of the performances, and most importantly, the skill of the editing, delivers a leap in aesthetic vision in film. The film is still emotionally involving and powerful and must have been a truly overwhelming experience to its contemporary viewers. I know nothing about its critical and popular acceptance upon release, but there can be no doubt that the film carries an emotional wallop that has real staying power.

There are a couple of other observations that I would like to mention before ending this discussion of the film. One is that of the horror of the scene of the Wheat Death’s demise. Even though we have been conditioned to dislike the man, and we may even associate all the social evil in the world with him, when we are placed with him in the threshing bin, the violence of the onslaught of grain is truly terrifying. It must have terrified its original audience. We cannot help but associating empathetically with this fellow human’s suffering, and we are placed at nearly the same level of vision as he. When we return to a later cut, and all we can see is the Wheat King’s struggling hand, finally stopping as suffocation overcomes him, this may be melodramatic, but it is also truly horrific. For a moment, his death becomes our own, and through the camera’s power of identification, we share in the Wheat King’s ultimate humanity, and something in us protests that even he does not deserve such a horrible fate.

This is a classic example of Griffith’s broad humanism. We shall see it again and again, and we will most certainly keep it in mind when we come to judge The Birth of a Nation.

The depth of Griffith’s empathy is best saved, however, for the final shot of the film. Moving eternally against what must the certainly of hopelessness, the farmer goes on with his infinite labor, accepting his eternal role as toiler of the earth. Griffith gives the man a face and a sense of dignity that he is rightly due, and one that will not die with him, but live eternally in his image.

The World Cinema Canon - A Collection on DVD

The Movies Begin: A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913
Volume One: The Great Train Robbery and Other Primary Works

Let me begin by saying that this is an extraordinary volume of early cinematic works, and is indispensable to any serious collection of film on DVD. The series actually begins before the beginning, with the serial photography of E.M. Muybridge, played sequentially on filmstock. One notices immediately that, right from the beginning, cinema was a modern technological tool, transforming the way we look at the world, while at the same time an inheritor of classical aesthetic forms. The Muybridge series consists mostly of nudes, fully bare and draped, but in motion. This modification of the classical aesthetic form charges the works with undeniable beauty, but the shock (imagine them in their day!) of seeing actual naked women moving about, first drove the dichotomy and tension between aesthetic contemplation and pornography that is still the essence of cinema today.

For cinema is, in a sense that the older arts are not, real. This becomes obvious watching the "realities" of the Lumiere Brothers, of which there are a nice sample here. For the Lumieres, unlike Edison (who is also included) took their cameras outdoors to shoot what was actually happening in the world around them. This does not mean that no sequences are "staged." As a matter of fact, wherever a camera is placed and people are aware of its presence, it becomes an unseen participant, and the actors, casual and actual assembleges or not, become present as part of the spectacle. The non-actors "act" for the camera - and this is an intrusion into reality, in truth a "re-making" or "remodeling" of reality in the camera’s own image. These brief, alluring, 19th century films make it undeniably clear that cinema was, by its nature and from the very beginning, a creator of its own aesthetic universe.

For example, take the camera placements in the static shots - of the boys swimming on the pier, the dragoons crossing the river, the trains traveling across the Brooklyn Bridge - here these early film makers were confronted with a problem clearly in nature of the medium itself. How does one most efficaciously show action? The solution in the above-mentioned cases involved the use of angles - translating itself unwittingly into the formal property of the diagonal composition. Classical composition in painting (or even photography) of a resting object has to be completely rethought for the recording of moving images. Therefore, the choice of the camera operator (later, the director) is essentially one of aesthetic choice in reality, thus determining meaning. In short, we have here the very first auteurs.

The scene being displayed can be fantastic (a caged lion, a parade of ostriches) or something quite ordinary (children fishing for clams, feeding chickens, etc.). But whatever the content, it quickly becomes obvious that it is in the treatment of the subject that the real interest lies. In short, form asserts its priority as the chief aesthetic principle of cinema over content, right from the very beginning.

We are indeed treated to some magnificent, exotic content, particularly in the early 1900s, as the films grow longer. Movement is used to communicate mass, as a camera stationed on a boat trolls down the magnificent skyline of Manhattan to tell a rich and complex story - economically and energetically instantaneous. Here the image, unfolding in time due to camera placement brings home dramatically the incomprehensible vastness and realized ambition of the modern world in a way that no other medium could ever do. (And for us, a hundred years later, reminds us both how recent this revolution was, and yet how thorough and overwhelming.)

Video - New York City Skyscrapers

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GGNLhDfMtU4

A static camera on a moving point is once again used, perched on the end of a train, winding through Colorado mining country. The vision produced is not only that of exquisite time and place, but the movement of the modern world (by machine) itself, as well as our place in it. As we wind around spectacular bends, the passengers ahead, whenever they angle into view, seem more aware of the camera than their spectacular environment - but the truth is that they, as well as we, are cognizant of both at the same time. Cinema is a form of art that comes into collision with the modern world, reflecting itself back on its subject - and it is in collusion with that same modern world that we are ironically freed to trap ourselves in our own subject matter.
For the central aesthetic problem in cinema is point of view, and that innately egoistic vantage defines the boundaries of cinema - while at the same time focuses our direction "outward," into the world beyond. If what returns to us is in the form of a kind of reflection of ourselves, this cannot be helped. It is inextricably part of the medium. And as all great masters of the art of cinema have realized ever since, it is the grateful acknowledgement of that fact that allows for powerful art.

Along with all the wonderful shorts, the first disc includes two classic "features" of the first decade of the century. On the surface, they could not be more different in subject matter or style: A Voyage to the Moon (1902) by the great French experimenter Georges Melies, and The Great Train Robbery (1903), perhaps the first true blockbuster in film history, directed by Edwin S. Porter.

Ironically, it is the fantastic, fabulous, other-worldly Melies film that remains the most stage-bound, and hence less revolutionary (or cinematic) than the realistic episodes of Porter’s thriller. Melies had to deal with painted and constructed sets for his grand illusion, and oftentimes this keeps his players in a static disadvantage. Melies "compensates" for this, however, in wildly imaginistic bursts of inspiration, often with the accompaniment of camera tricks (aliens "disappearing" when struck, an umbrella transformed to a mushroom, etc). A true early innovator, Melies recognized technical aspects of the medium that could be exploited in unique ways, probably decades before anyone else would approach such techniques. But as a stage performer, his films - even the great ones such as this, remain aesthetically tied to the traditions of stagecraft.

In a sense, this is not a criticism, more of a simple observation and distinction of technique. Melies shows us one way of using the cinema, and it is a way that would bear great fruit in the productions of surrealism, expressionism and cartoons. His style remains of great influence right up to the present day and beyond - while at the same time, they shock, delight and amuse us in themselves. A Voyage to the Moon, amazingly, has not dimmed the slightest with the passing of over a century in cinema. It remains a startling feast for the eyes and the imagination. It has not lost, but probably has gained, its power to startle - even shock.

Video - A Voyage to the Moon

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aI0BmQaIIR4

The Great Train Robbery is a horse of a completely different color, so to speak. Here, we witness all those years of experimentation with "natural" camera placement, strung artfully together through editing - cinema’s second great aesthetic tool and principle, to involve the audience in a sustained narrative.

There is no inherent reason why cinema should have naturally developed primarily into a medium of narrative structure, particularly of fiction. The dictates of filmic materials could just have easily developed into "visual poems," even intricately woven "tapestries" of image and experience. Of course, in a few instances, they do, but that is not the general path taken by cinematic history. In retrospect, however, it is somewhat ironic that "fictional" narrative should have so completely come to dominate over "documentary" form, as the earliest displays of film subject are almost all completely naturalistic. How did we get, in such a short period of time, to such an adventure as The Great Train Robbery?

The truth is that many different forms of film experimentation developed simultaneously. The steps that led up to The Great Train Robbery came in ever-increasing increments of one-shot, two-shot, then more-shot films that told a story. In the explosion of commercial exhibitionism in early films, the trick was to maintain interest - and since an audience could get easily get caught up in an exciting narrative, it is not hard to imagine what type of film would most hold their interest, after the effect of watching moving images had lost its pure novelty. Indeed, with such a sophisticated structure as Train Robbery, with its subject matter, length, melodrama, realism and advanced cinematic language, it is no wonder that the film would become the established standard for what would basically define "movies," right up to the present day.

As for the formal aspects of the film, Train Robbery was merely an extension of the filmic language that had been developing for nearly a decade by Porter, among many others. Even the most advanced technical/psychological methodology used in the film - simultaneous jump-cutting, is in no way a new development - merely suspended longer for what was by then a more seasoned and comprehending audience. That two narratives, thematically and causually connected, could be maintained at the same time took no stretch of the imagination, and the resultant intercutting, particularly in a chase scene could obviously be used to create and increase tension.

It is the dictum of the marketplace that what is successful shall be pursued. And as successful as The Great Train Robbery was, it provided the basic template on which nearly all later successful films would be made.

But why would the "realism narrative" of Porter supersede the "fantasy narrative" of Melies in the popular imagination? Probably the answer is that the Porter film was an American success in that vast untapped realm of consumption that was forming in the vast modern society of the New World. It is easy to see that such "fantastic" elements as in Melies’ films, were attached to an older tradition of art (as well as entertainment) in Europe. It should be no surprise to see that the tradition of the "art film," both conceptually and in popularity, would thrive in Europe, while in the U.S., film would follow a course that was more connected to cheap literature and newspapers.

In America, despite the extraordinary artistry later developed, even during its "classic years" of cinema (roughly 1915-1945), the self consciousness of "film as art" would naturally flourish, develop, and eventually come from abroad.

Video - The Great Train Robbery

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bc7wWOmEGGY

Volume Two: The Early European Pioneers

This disc seems to be a British documentary (BBC?) of the early development of film and comes from a different source from Volume One. First of all, there is audio narration throughout - plus some of the same territory in Part One is covered, particularly the "actualities" of the Lumieres.
Secondly, this focus on the "European" pioneers are almost exclusively British. This is a valuable collection, however, and the names and films of these early architects are certainly appreciated for study, however unbalanced the perspective is. Actually, the documentary’s inclusion in such a larger set as this validates its inclusion in such a comprehensive overview. Unfortunately, this total collection can now be seen to be somewhat of a mish-mash of various sources, rather than the thought-out, carefully planned summary that one would naturally have preferred - and that the packaging would lead you to believe that it is.

That aside, we are treated to many interesting films, primarily narrative in nature, while our audio guide points out various technical and conceptual accomplishments of the individual film makers. Of course there is no way to verify that these are the sole authors of these "breakthroughs," as so many "directors" were creating their own films, not only in Britain, but obviously in America, as on the continent. Simultaneous development of principles during these busy years in cinema are almost certainly the rule, rather than the exception. Still, it is wonderful to have this concise gallery of important British pioneers.

One of the main points that Part Two impresses (in conjunction with Part One), is precisely that there was so much activity in film-making during these early years, as well as film consumption. This is nowhere stressed in the narrative, but it is an obvious inference from the fact of this mass of production and the variety of experimentation. Early movie-goers, even by the first decade of the new century, must have been positively innundated by this new form of entertainment and absorbed it into the general culture very quickly.

Of course we know that this is historically true, but it is worth the while to take time to point it out when viewing such a parade of so-called "primitive" films, that these were not seen, as through our eyes, as the oddities of some kind of amateur "pre-history" of cinema. Rather, film would be such an integral part of American and European life that by the time of the "Hollywood explosion" of the ‘mid-teens and twenties, it was clearly a second generation of film-makers - as well as film-goers - that were working in tandem.

Volume Three: Experimentation and Discovery

The third disc is a continuation of the "documentary" of Disc 2, with the same narrator. It begins with various other British "pioneers," and does point out some very interesting techniques that were being used, as he tells us, "pre-Griffith."

The disc begins with the "Hepworth Mfg. Co.," which does present some pretty funny and original films, abetted by cinema trickery. Especially wonderful is That Fatal Sneeze (1907), which uses quite a number of clever gags to carry its simple premise.

What follows are two documentaries of labor: Cricks and Martin’s A Visit to Peck Frean & Co. (1906) and A Day in the Life of a Coalminer (1911) by the Kinetco Production Company. Both these early British cinematic examinations of the organized labor of the day are quite eye-opening. Dull and tedious to watch, they pull forward into consciousness the dullness and tedium of life for millions of workers throughout the still-newly industrialized world. Although this affect is not intentional, and the film-makers are attempting to simply show us something of interest, we cannot help but feel the oppression of the mass cracker factory, where men and women stand, doing the same repetitive operations for what must have been something like 12-hour days, probably six days a week for a subsistence wage. What cinema has captured here is less life than enslavement. That it does not view itself or its subject this way is hard evidence of the economic assumptions shared by the age of the machine, of which the cinema was now a part.
The coal-mining film that follows seems to be almost liberating in contrast, where workers scramble all day with push-cars, moving endless amounts of dirt, and picking through the mounds and mounds of coal for debris. The shots inside the mine are relatively brief, and in no way communicates the time, claustrophobia, pain and tedium of the miners beneath the earth. Riding down a swift elevator with a lantern to pick away at the edges of shaft comes off as merely an exciting little lark for the film-goer. That this vision is a distorted capitalist propaganda piece is given away at the end, when the worker, once he receives his pay, returns to his lovely, spacious home to enjoy the warmth of his day’s labor surrounded by his beautiful, well-fed upper-middle-class family. That such bullshit did not create a riot is obviously a suggestion that this film was not displayed publicly, but possibly for choice investors.
The true potential of evil in film is on display here for perhaps the first time, as the power of the camera to distort, rather than to reveal reality is ultimately uncovered. Forever, the medium, like writing, will be a double-edged sword. The difference here is that in cinema, the self-revealing nature of the image will argue itself (silently) as pure. One can lie in a tract, but seeing is believing. Isn’t it?

I must digress a little more here. It is in the very nature of cinema that the viewer is given an image to which he corresponds with reality, via his natural point of view or identification with that image. And that image is precisely what the film-maker wants the viewer to perceive. Hence the awesome mass power of cinema.

Let us ask, who makes motion pictures? Why, they are produced by large corporations for profit. And what do they wish to show? Well, they wish to show workers and consumers like ourselves, happily doing our jobs and purchasing every wonderful thing we can.
So in essence, from the beginning of cinema, right up to this very instant, this has been an enormous part of the equation of cinematic language and one of the chief problems of the development of the art of film. (Historically, this will become more clear with the blatant fascist and communist propaganda films of later decades, but it is already inherent in any form under capitalist production.) It will be left to the individual film-maker, what will more than 50 years later be labelled the auteur, to impose an individualistic vision on a movie that will subvert the vocabulary of cinema to make an attack upon the assumptions of the society that creates and disseminates it.

Next up on this disc, are some selections from Pathe Freres, the enormous French production company that jumped up in the early teens to be the world leader of cinema production prior to Hollywood’s emergence. Not surprisingly, most of the films are highly polished products, unimaginative and dull. Clearly the result of an assembly-line mentality (very much the same as the English cracker company shown above), the films have already become pure product. Such lavish snorers as Ali Baba and Aladdin are nothing more than stencil-tinted tableaux that steal from cinema’s pioneering creators (especially Georges Melies!) to display a predictable, formulaic spectacle. Here, as always, we see cinema as a potential art form, calling out loudly in demand for true artists!

The disc ends with a few films by Edwin S. Porter for Edison, but none of them show the driving intensity or realism of his majestic The Great Train Robbery (1903), shown on disc one. Why is that? One could argue that Porter was an able technician who magically stumbled upon a few basic elements that produced one of the first great classic films. The romantic Western setting and the natural elements of bandits and the chase might have stimulated something in the production that might never have been found in other sources.

But Porter’s technical virtuosity at this point would lead us to conclude that he knew exactly what he was doing - even if he didn’t seem to know how to advance it, or even repeat it.
Fortunately, for the history of cinema, there was another director working for Edison who would begin pushing the implications of Porter’s and other’s films into just such an art form, that in its majesty would dominate all the other arts of the twentieth century. However, D.W. Griffith would not only produce new solutions for the art, but with it, new problems - problems that are still in the process of working themselves out.

Volume Four: The Magic of Melies

This, as the title suggests, is a compilation of the work of the early cinematographer/director/magician Georges Meleies. As we have already seen on Disc One, with Voyage to the Moon, Melies was the most radical and experimental exploiter of the new technology of cinema. While there is nothing on this disc that compares with that masterwork - a similar, bizarre "feature" entitled "The Impossible Voyage" covers some of the same distance - it lets you immerse yourself for an hour or so into the outlandish, flamboyant thrill of his fantastic art.

What would cinema have become without Melies - or a Melies? Of course we have seen that there were ticksters and experimenters all throughout the early years of movies. But the point is, that there was no Melies, except of course Melies. He was the only one, the oddball, to pick up the camera and use it precisely for what it seemed to the rest of the world not to be intended to be used for. What a dull history might have ensued? Would there ever have been a Dr. Caligari without this French showman to point the way to a completely artificial world of cinema art? Would expressionism have developed at all, with all its concomitant implications for the development of the formal stylistics of French Poetic Realism or American Film Noir?
"What if" questions can be big questions, and they are quite deceptive and elusive. Perhaps Melies made no real impact at all. Perhaps he was just too strange. Perhaps he was just too wrong.

For George Melies, the showman, cinema was not about the natural proper development of the new art form. It was for exploitation. The strange marriage in Melies work between the stage-bound set and the trickery of the medium produced a queer hybrid whose radically un-artistic nature seems today to have been a miraculous necessity, as well as a presagement of healthy exploitative use of film up until this day. How boring cinema would be if it had only been held to follow and form its own "classic" principles!

The first of Melies’ true inheritors, in a spiritual sense, is probably Mack Sennett. I have this wonderful picture from Sennett’s biography where he approaches Griffith when they both worked for Biograph, and enthusiastically pitched the notion of using his (Griffith’s) long-thought and thoroughly worked technical revolutions of film language to create elaborately designed practical jokes. Sennett recalls Griffith staring at him incredulously, as though he were an absolute lunatic, and passing, without making comment.

Luckily for us, for cinema, for the mental health of Western Civilization, Sennett went on to found his own studio, and slapstick comedy was born.

Sennett seems relevant here because, glancing back to Melies, what we see is ultimately that same utter lack of pretension to art. Or even better - we see a mockery of it. For Melies was about showmanship, period. His revolutionary technical innovations were all pure trickery - stop motion, intercut negatives, the combination of filmed realities with painted backdrops. Their only purpose? To amuse and astound an audience.

This is an essential collection, for sure. There are others available, and everyone should have some Melies in their collection. He is a prophet without honor (or mistaken honor) that should serve as thoughtful meditation for anyone truly interested in movies. And his films don’t stop amusing and astounding audiences a full century later.

Volume Five: Comedy, Spectacle and New Horizons

The fifth and final disc of the collections rounds things off nicely by compiling a representative selection of more "mature" works from the 1910s, each representing both the culmination of filmic development so far, as well as pointing towards the immediate future of film styles and genres.

The first feature, The Policemen’s Little Run, (1907) is a hilarious French spoof of the chase film, presaging Sennet’s "Keystone Cops" series, and slapstick in general. The story concerns what seems an entire battalion of policemen chasing a bulldog who has escaped from a butcher shop with a sizable piece of meat. Once cornered, the dog turns pursuer, chasing the terrified cops through the streets and back to their station for safety.

The next film is also French, another comedy (Troubles of a Grass Widower [1913]), this one featuring the star Max Linder as an incompetent would-be householder, completely dependent on his wife. Both of these films, taken together demonstrate two main threads of comedy that will be followed up throughout the silent era: the anarchic motion of groups and the focus on a specific individual, with reliance on his character for the humorous content of the film.
The Italian historical "mini-epic" Nero, or the Fall of Rome (1909) is dull and stagey, but it presages the first large productions, presaging Cabiria, which would follow in just four years, inspiring Griffith to make Birth of a Nation.

Speaking of Griffith, an exciting and mature short appears here: The Girl and Her Trust, a more sophisticated and personality-driven extension of the "crime and chase" genre descending from The Great Train Robbery. Interestingly, this is immediately followed by a Keystone short, Bangville Police, which seems to satirize the the same format in its own terms.

Especially charming is the inclusion of one of the first - if not actually the first - animated films. Pioneer Windsor McCay’s magnificent cartoons are shown as they are actually produced, opening up a completely new way of unfettered moving pictures.

The total effect of the series as a whole, while in no way definitive, is a remarkable introduction to what cinema was and would ultimately become. We shall see themes introduced so early articulated in many various ways over the succeeding decades, but cinema would never move so far from its early sources to become unrecognizably separated from the technical and social roots of its earliest development.

Griffith Masterworks

This box-set compilation is obviously indispensable to any film library. It contains seven discs, which include: Biograph Shorts 1909-1913, The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919) and Orphans of the Storm (1921). Needless to say, the collection is a binding work of both the development and epiphany of modern cinema as an art form. Taken together in a set of this sort, it is dazzling to sit and contemplate the legacy and impact of D.W. Griffith, cinema’s first great auteur.

Biograph Shorts: 1909-1913

Once it was considered as accepted myth that David Wark Griffith almost single-handedly invented the language for narrative films. We now know that these innovations were developed by many film-makers, concurrently, and incrementally, all over the world. So what was the unique contribution of Griffith during the five years he directed roughly 450 short films for the Biograph Company?
Well, first of all, the number in itself is staggering. Griffith seems to have made all types of films in all types of genres, possibly creating many and merging many others. The consensus today is that he was not only the most dominating single director of this incredible transitional period from primitive cinema to what amounts to essentially the modern era of narrative film, culminating with its definitive epic statement in The Birth of a Nation. Griffith was not only the most prolific film-maker, he was probably the most astute. If he did not actually invent all of the innovations that he had claimed to make, it is also true that he understood them better than anyone, and applied them in so many different combinations, so rigorously and for so long, that he can legitimately claim this time of cinematic development for himself without being accused of fraud or plagiarist.
Perhaps it can all be summed up by simply stating that Griffith, through his extraordinary prolificy, his tireless energy and sheer intelligent commitment to the making of movies, so dominated all his peers that in many ways he simply became the movies. Another way of saying this is that he simply was the best. It probably is no exaggeration, looking at the bulk, power and popularity of his work, that he simply transformed cinema into his own image.
But is this necessarily a good thing?
These two discs offer a treasure trove for the true film lover. But we cannot make any sort of definitive statement regarding Griffith’s actual development after watching 23 films out of 450. This being said, however, some of these are among his most written-about, successful and we may assume, representative shorts. So we will still come away knowing much more than we did before, even if we still fall way short of the mark.
To assess the value of Griffith, one must get to know him, and that is what this set helps us to do. It may be only an introduction, but it is a most valuable introduction, and without it (or some equivalent) we definitely remain in the dark about just what a movie is or can be. It is only through assessing the individual films in themselves that will give us anything nearing an accurate portrait of the man and artist and will allow us to draw any assumptions concluding his strengths or weaknesses.
Naturally, we must use a counter-balance, and this we have with the Kino set Early Cinema, described above. Once again, there is no way that such a set can be comprehensive, but we do possess some broad, general working notion of the cinematic world to which Griffith arrived in 1908, and to the historical context in which he worked for the next six years.
One must always keep in mind that movies, even (especially?) back then were a very public media, and that these films were made exclusively for, and watched by, literally thousands of ordinary people off the street who plopped down their nickels to come in and be entertained by this art form.
"Entertainment" is an important concept, and it still remains so, quite profoundly, for cinema even today. For whatever Griffith conceived as "art" was quite meaningless to the audiences of his time, as it has fundamentally remained for all time since. "Art" is the province of the elite, and though the elite would grow exponentially in the latter half of the twentieth century, it would never become the dominant view of what remains an essentially popular medium.
The problem, therefore, that confronted Griffith - who clearly viewed himself as an artist of the highest form - would be there for Alfred Hitchcock, as well as all of the great auteurs that would follow in his stead, particularly in America. How does one produce valid art which sells as a popular commodity without making sacrifices to ugly "populism?"
Well, of course cinema continues to this day to make ugly sacrifices: there are new ones released in theatres every week. There are also those that have gone the more esoteric way of "pure art." But as Hitchock deftly pointed out, it’s easy to make a good "art picture" if you don’t care if anyone wants to pay and come see it. The harder job is to thread the narrow road between the aesthetic and the popular and make the roads meet. "The problem with movies as an art is that they’re a business - and the problem with movies as a business, is that they’re art." I’m not sure who first pointed this axiom out, but it remains cinema’s central dialectic as it functions in our culture.
D.W. Griffith made movies that were extraordinarily popular. As noted, he also insisted that his works were perfectly justified as "high art." We can harbor no doubt that he was successful in the first category (at least in his day - does he remain so today?), but what of the second category.
I think that what we will discover, not only with his shorts, but throughout his entire career, D.W. Griffith hewed such a close parallel between these two worlds that for him they were practically an identity. It was not until the failure of Intolerance, probably, that anyone, let alone Griffith himself, recognized that this dichotomy was there.
For let us be honest here. As an artist, D.W. Griffith did not align himself with the highest, most advanced artists of his day, either in art or literature. He was no budding modernist, and his cinema would never attune itself to the adventures of pre-war naturalistic criticism or certainly post-war abstraction. It would be left to the film-makers of other nations to pick up that banner. Griffith, in taste and perspective, was decidedly American middle class. In the greatest criticism of Griffith is indeed not racism, but it is the fact that he consistently appears sentimental. That sentimentalism is not feigned, but is a crucial aspect of D.W. Griffith’s world. I can think of no other artist who exists as such a paradox - a vast-sighted, bold visionary, tied inextricably to an already archaic view of life. In seemingly every Griffith film there can be seen a forward-looking modernism linked strangely to a bizarre sense of naivety. It is, in my opinion, this naivety that is the source of his racism, rather than the other way around.
If we cannot accept Griffith’s racism, can we justifiably accept his naivety at any mature level? Stated another way, can we still consider D.W. Griffith a valid artist.
I will save the specific topic of racism for the discussion of The Birth of a Nation, but it is certainly not too early, in these one and two-reelers, to question their naivety. Can we appreciate, in a full sense, something that we have completely outgrown? Or must we, if we are to admire Griffith at all, do so in that emasculated way that says, condescendingly, "it was great for its day?" This is to regard Griffith’s art as the play of an unenlightened child. We have learned enough not to do this with primitive cinema, so that if we do this with the much more sophisticated Griffith, are we not asserting that he took cinema down a completely wrong pathway?
The answer will be in the viewing of the films - and the determining consideration will be the question as to whether they still have the power to engage us. And if they do so, how do they work their powers over our imaginations?
Put simply, the root and essence of modern cinema is contained here on these two discs or they are not. If we cannot fully embrace Griffith’s vision, I suggest we shove him out of the center of the history of cinema and declare his oeuvre to be a misstep, a diversion. They can retain their historical interest, but they can no longer claim for their author his most revered place in the canon of international film.
This Kino collection has, like the above-mentioned set, has its positive and negative qualities. On the plus side, the selection of films seems to be very good, and one can hope that they are truly representative. Also, they are of fine quality and are very easy to view. The music that accompanies the films is excellent. And it is quite easy to choose the different titles (although that should always be the case, without having to say so).
What damages the collection is the almost complete lack of information about the films in the collection. I have had to go to alternate sources to get more information. There should at least be some sort of introductions, along with a general discussion, or at least an informative booklet of some kind. Ideally, of course, there should be scholarly commentary accompanying each film, preferably more than one. But there is nothing.
In addition to that, there is a very odd arrangement to the films themselves on the discs. The films, from disc one to disc two, appear in roughly chronological order. But on each disc there are about four more selections of so-called "Bonus" films, which practically doubles the viewing time of the series. What the hell is this apparently completely arbitrary distinction doing on the set? Are the "Main" films canonical in some way that the "Bonus" films are not? Are they considered inferior? Are they new additions to an older set? No matter how I look at the matter, it seems absolutely ridiculous.
I have made the decision to simply take the 23 films and re-arrange them chronologically, dissolving the artificial categories of the set. And that is the way we will approach the films.
The complete films included in this collection are listed chronologically here, according to IMDb.com:

The Adventures of Dollie (1908)
Those Awful Hats (1909)
The Sealed Room (1909)
A Corner in Wheat (1909)
The Unchanging Sea (1910)
The Userer (1910)
His Trust (1911)
Enoch Ardeen (1911)
The Last Drop of Water (1911)
The Miser’s Heart (1911)
The Sunbeam (1912)
One Is Business, the Other Crime (1912)
The Lesser Evil (1912)
An Unseen Enemy (1912)
Friends (1912)
The Painted Lady (1912)
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
The New York Hat (1912)
The Burglar’s Dilemma (1912)
Death’s Marathon (1913)
The Mothering Heart (1913)
The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1914)
The Massacre (1914)

These are 23 examples of D.W. Griffith’s art for Biograph from 1908-1914, and this is the logical way in which to view them.
The Adventures of Dollie (1908) - What shocks me upon re-watching D.W. Griffith’s directorial debut is that it consists of just 12 shots! The film is only 12 minutes long, so we are seeing, on average, just one shot per minute. I had remembered this little opus as a somewhat complex story, so I expected many more shots. The film demonstrates, if nothing else, that Griffith possessed, from the beginning, a sure story-telling sense, and here he presents his material with supreme economy of means.
The Adventures of Dollie would fall into the broad genres of suspense and melodrama, which are not clearly distinguished at this point. The premise is simple - put a child (or some other defenseless innocent) at the mercy of hostile forces, and make the audience sweat it out until they are saved. I suppose the best-known prototype for this type of film would be Cecil M. Hepworth’s Rescued by Rover (1905), which is included in the Movies Begin box set above. Has Griffith (or film in general) advanced beyond this early model?
The first thing that I can point out is the lack of repetition that one sees in Rescued by Rover, where we must follow the dog’s journey to the kidnapped child a full two times, shot by shot. Here the story is a bit more fleshed out, yet at the same time, uses fewer devices to get its point across.
The plot is simple, but very effective, I’m sure, to the audiences of the day. A family (mother, father, tiny daughter) go on an outdoors outing. Mother takes "Dollie" down by the river, where she is annoyed by a gypsy attempting to sell cheap wicker baskets. When she refuses to buy, the gypsy steals her purse. Father comes to the rescue and gives him a stern lesson with his riding crop. The gypsy returns to his campsite and tells his wife of his ordeal, then seizes on the plan of revenge by capturing the little girl (as all gypsies are known to do, of course). Father and Dollie are playing badminton, and when father gets called away, he leaves little Dollie alone as prey to the evil gypsy. The gypsy runs back to his camp with the little girl, with Father (and others) in high pursuit. The gypsy arrives first, however, and places Dollie in a barrel, which he nails shut. Father and the others search the camp, but can find nothing, so they leave to continue their search. Left alone, the gypsy and his wife throw all their possessions in their wagon, with the barrel containing Dollie sitting perilously on the back. A beautifully composed shot shows a rushing river. The gypsys’ wagon pulls fully into the frame, and we watch from behind as it enters the water. Surely enough, the precious barrel tumbles off into the stream. We cut to a broad shot of the barrel floating on the water, about to enter a swirl of rapids, leading possibly to a waterfall. One can feel the audience’s collective heart rising in their throats. Then we cut to the waterfall itself, and surely as it comes, the barrel reaches the edge and goes careening over the falls. We cut downstream where a boy (whom we had seen with a companion earlier) sits fishing. As the barrel floats into his view, he hooks it and reels it in. Father arrives, and the two of them haul the barrel ashore. Father opens the lid, and lo and behold, there is little Dollie, safe and sound. He hugs her, and mother joins them, and we all breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Yes, of course, there is much that is old-fashioned and hokey about this melodrama, but I think I have to point out that the film is trading in some purely cinematic trickery that will bear great fruit in the future of the medium. The adroitness with which the director makes the audience "assume" that the child is actually in the imperiled barrel transfers their focus and identification on what is in reality simply an inanimate object. Did audiences of the day stop and think that the child wasn’t really in the barrel as it plummeted over the falls. We are so used to thinking about this process reflexively, but I have no doubt that many early viewers didn’t stop to think about the substitution of an empty barrel for the sake of the shot. Probably many of them reasoned it out as they were watching, or perhaps after the fact.
The key trick here is (1) showing the girl being nailed inside the barrel; (2) showing the barrel in peril and finally plummeting over the falls; and finally (3) showing the girl emerging from the barrel unharmed. The psychological assumption, of course, is that the girl is still in the barrel during sequence (2), which is strictly a trick of editing. Whether an audience member actually believes that the girl is in the barrel is almost beside the point. For the purpose of the narrative, the girl is still inside the barrel, and that is what the director wishes to persuade. The strategy works seamlessly, and the result is a psychological and emotional identification as the director lingers on the barrel leading up to, and climaxing with, its plummet.
After this shocking sequence, with which we have so strenuously identified, the denouement reveals the happy outcome which reinforces the illusion and allows us to relax and enjoy our cathartic experience in reassurance that everyone is alright.
This may all seem very basic, and it is. These are the kinds of principles that will allow future masters such as Alfred Hitchcock make us squirm with layers of viewer identification. Here we are seeing film language being developed in its most basic narrative form.
I cannot claim any originality for D.W. Griffith for this particular technique - indeed he is not the author of the script, and the conception may well belong to the screenwriter. Moreover, this technique is at least as old as Melies’ trick films of five and six years earlier, where we are shown a person or object placed in a box that suddenly disappears and transforms. How much this technique of identification was being pushed during the popular narrative films of 1908, I cannot say. But the principle is essential to film language, and at least in The Adventures of Dollie, serves to create a wholistic cinematic world all unto itself.
And what can I say? It works. The film is entertaining - even if our reactions are muted by over-familiarity with this kind of device in this day and age, and we also know from repeated experience that "Dollie" is going to be just fine.
I don’t know how much D.W. Griffith’s maiden work says about him as a distinctive director. Probably nobody does. But it does shed some light on just where the narrative film was in its process of development by 1908. The language will only continue to undergo modification and continue to broaden as we go along.
(Just as a note: "Dollie" was portrayed by Gladys Egan ("Little Gladys") in her screen debut. She would continue to play child parts in Griffith’s Biograph films, and after, until 1914. She appears in the following films in this collection: A Corner in Wheat, The Unchanging Sea, The Userer, His Trust, The Last Drop of Water, and The Sunbeam.)
(The Mother was portrayed by Linda Arvidson, who would later become Griffith’s wife, eventually appearing in his films as Linda A. Griffith.)

Those Awful Hats (1909) - This 3-minute "gag" reel requesting that ladies remove their hats is a trick film right out of Melies. Griffith has taken another film and used it as an insert shot to produce the effect of people watching a movie onscreen at the cinema house. It is particularly interesting because of its reproduction of what is probably a typical nickelodeon, circa 1909, piano player and all. The audience watching the film are shot from behind, with the aisle set in the center where patrons enter and find their seats. Various women with ridiculously high headgear enter and arguments ensue as people cannot see. Finally, a giant crane, as in a vending machine, swoops down and picks the monstrosity off of one woman’s head, to the applause of the audience. Then, as a topper, it returns and picks up another woman herself, hat and all, and carries her away to the delight of the crowd.
An added bonus to the rowdiness is the appearance of Mack Sennett in a false nose and a ridiculously loud checkered jacket, creating a great amount of consternation in himself, along with his be-hatted companion.
The "film within the film" tends to compete with the action, however, as a frustrated man in white jacket and moustache is auditioning perspective performers. They are so bad that he goes into periodic fits, physically tossing auditioners out of the room, while pulling others in.
The film is a quaint little puff piece, and an antiquated curiosity, but it does demonstrate that Griffith knew all the tricks of the cinema up to that point. More interestingly, it shows that he could have done comedy if he had wanted to. Ah, well . . . I suppose he would just leave that up to the fellow in the checkered coat.

The Sealed Room (1909) - This little melodrama, based on Poe’s "Cask of Amontillado, deals with a jealous king who seals his lady up in a room, while she cavorts with a court musician, thus leading them both to suffocate for their infidelity. The film is composed of 29 very static shots, most of which are cuts between the couple on the inside of the room and the angry, jealous king on the outside. Amazingly, the king’s servants are able to construct an entire wall in the door of the room, without the guilty lovers being aware of the fact. (I suppose it’s l’amour.)
I don’t really sense any real moralizing or judgement on the part of Griffith here. The king is depicted as a strutting tyrant, and though they are guilty (it’s merely flirtation - songs and flowers), I can’t see the perspective of the film as the lovers getting their just desserts. Probably what interested Griffith more in this story is the emotional horror and the shock he anticipated giving to the audience. Morally, the director stays out of the way, making the film seem strangely nihilistic. There is no-one with whom to clearly identify, and the lovers turn on one another as they realize their predicament. While, presumably, the audience recoiled while watching them die in agony, there are no devices used for viewer identification purposes.
Technically, as well as narratively, this film is very straightforward. The cutting, as I mentioned is very simple, and is used in an effective, yet very limited way to contrast the two perspectives. Griffith increases the rapidity of the cuts from inside to outside as the lovers’ panic heightens and their death approaches. The frightfulness of their panicking, then eventual suffocation, though overly acted, contrasts well with the equally over-acted sadism of the king’s delight at their demise.
I wonder just how vested the interests of a contemporary audience would really be to this film? Did the film audiences of 1909 actually swoon to the horror of what seems, from our perspective, such worn camp? I suppose reactions varied from individual to individual, but such films must have been, overall, successful, or they would not have gone on being made. The audience’s sophistication, however, would grow along with the filmakers’ development of story and mise-en-scene.