The Miser's Heart

The Miser’s Heart (1911) - Without the addition of a third party in a triangle of characters, this would be a rather simple story, with just enough melodrama and pathos to put it across. It would not be a great film, by any means - but with the introduction of a new element, The Miser’s Heart dramatically continues Griffith’s forays into constructing the national psyche of film drama.

Here, we are introduced to an elderly gentleman, living alone in an apartment house - “The Miser” of the story (played with sensitivity by Adolph Lestina) and his bonding with precocious little 6-year-old “Kathy” (Edith Haldeman, from His Trust). Kathy’s mother (Linda Arvidson) is ill, and that seemingly is the premise to let this child wander around the building unsupervised.
A title card opens both the theme and moral of the film: “HOW WEALTH IS MEANINGLESS WHEN DANGER THREATENS LOVED ONES,” one of the least insightful observations ever brought to the screen - but we have our little melodrama to begin.

The film’s visual center is a dank stairwell, where Little Kathy creeps up and down the steps with her dolly, and where she first encounters The Miser, on his way up to his room with his groceries. At first chiding the child for being in the way, he drops a bun which little Kathy snatches up playfully. Going back to retreat it, at first he is irritated, but quickly falls under the innocent’s charm and smilingly giving the bun to her.

This tiny sequence is acted and directed with great economy and elegance - it establishes the main characters and forms a relationship very quickly. This scene shouldn’t be undervalued because of its simplicity - Griffith has learned how to very quickly both inform the audience and emotionally establish their sympathies, at the same time delivering a prelude to the main action of the film.

As he moves back up towards his room, Kathy rushes forward to thank him, and the old man bends to give the lovely child a kiss on the cheek. Here, he has been clearly moved, obviously touched by her innocence, and a palpable sense of humanity clearly emerges from a depth inside of him, and is delivered to the audience.

We immediately leave this scene to take up a completely new character, and at this point, completely irrelevant story. “Jules the Thief,” played with a wonderfully natural air of casual bravado by a brilliant young Lionel Barrymore. This future perennial film icon is here shown as a mustached, rascally but benign n’er-do-well, who is being ordered by the police to leave town. Barrymore’s ethnically indeterminate, street-wise character - neither hero nor villain, but simply modern society’s sly refuse, living by his wits on the edges of the city, is a great Hollywood icon that is grandly presented, if not introduced here. “Jules the Thief” is a great stock character who will give life to American (and foreign) films right up to the present day. He serves, for example, as a model for Charles Chaplin, who will adopt his persona for extraordinary comic purposes (whether consciously or not) to create an international phenomenon in just a few years hence.

But “Jules the Thief” is a much more resilient and reliable archetype than even Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” would be, being more elemental, and more fundamentally a uniquely American icon. He will appear continually in urban comedies and dramas, even in cartoons (culminating in his most glorious manifestation as Bugs Bunny). He will be a familiar face throughout the coming century, in the persona of many great stars, such as Bogart, Brando, and Jack Nicholson, as well as countless small character players. His unwillingness (or inability) to live inside the conventions of American society, combined with his pragmatic dishonesty, endears American audiences. He is perennially the outsider, but the guy we know is ultimately okay. As would-be refugees ourselves, we can always comfortably identify with this character’s ultimate freedom and recognize with a wink his ultimate goodness.

“Jules the Thief” is one of the great mythical icons of American cinema and the subconscious, relaxed rebel in all of us. He defines and perpetuates one of the most cherished views of ourselves - the true American independent cast in his modern mode and setting. One of our most cherished (and essential) archetypes, he embodies a uniquely American sense of “so-what” detachment, but always with a social conscious underneath. In a sense, he is the self-contained American at his finest - from Walt Whitman to Jay & Silent Bob.

Played here to perfection, in his most basic form, Lionel Barrymore proves himself one of the first truly great actors of world cinema. He commands the centrality of every scene he appears, simply by his raggedy nonchalance. His acting is the very opposite of over-acting, yet he dominates every scene he is in, and ultimately the film, simply by his attractive diffidence. One shrug from his shoulder tells more about the true status of the world than a volleying bromide from a stage of exalted, inspired master thespians.

One of the great secrets to “Jules the Thief” is that in his apparent diffidence, any urgent reaction by him is going to signal to the entire audience that something extremely significant is going on, and they will elevate the situation, whatever it is, through his eyes. If even “Jules” thinks its important enough to get excited about, we’d better pay close attention. Thus, dramatic scenes take on greater power through audience identification - and that is precisely what happens in The Miser’s Heart.

The first thing we see Jules do after being released from the police station is to casually steal a bit of food from an outraged delivery boy. That’s right, Jules is a thief. But we do not condemn him as such. Why? It is quite simply because of his true character and innate goodness, a kind of lackadaisical attitude to the ordinary “rules” of society, precisely because he can transcend them. Nobody gets hurt when Jules grabs a meal, and more importantly, he gets fed - that’s reason enough for the crime. What matters for the audience, however, is what Jules recognizes is truly significant.

But first the writer, the actor - and most importantly - the director must carve out for him this exalted, unique position. It is sold, ultimately, by acting, however - we have to be able to believe Jules.

At this point in the film, we don’t even know this character - as a matter of fact, he’s just dropped down in the middle of a film which doesn’t seen to concern him at all. All the audience knows so far is that he’s a thief, he’s been told by the police to get out of town, and then - boom! - we see him steal. By any measure, he has been established in our mind as a criminal, and thus a villain - somebody dangerous we should watch out for.

How Griffith, with Barrymore’s superb acting, will invert this judgement and win him over to our side, is done very deftly, and even at this early date, with surprising sophistication.
After playing a bit of cat-and-mouse with the outraged delivery boy, Jules winds up, quite coincidentally, on the stairwell where we have seen the exchange between The Miser and Little Kathy. It is precisely this accidental nature of Jules’s stumbling into the previously designed plot that allows for him to execute any meaningful action in the drama as it unfolds. For Jules plans nothing - his response is always by impulse, and his seemingly random appearances in other people’s lives has its own mythic resonance, and this is a point that deserves some meditation.
America, a land of immigrants - many of whom saw these films, thus ultimately seeing themselves in these films - is not the class-structured, pre-determined order of the Old World. Here, anything is possible, and the most powerful personified deity in daily life is not Predetermined Destiny, but Random Chance. Anything can happen in America. And thus it does. It should be no surprise that Jules should turn up in the same spot as other characters already defined in the film - any more than it will be surprising that he will ultimately be the great deliverer, the savior of the day.

It is this deep faith in the randomness of events, the ever-possible nature of colliding destinies that keeps the promise of America alive for millions of its inhabitants. These are not special people, certainly not privileged - and that is the great key to American optimism and hope. In this great, chaotic realm of human possibility, with thousands of unrelated concurrent events, anyone can stumble into a situation where they might prove a hero. Or just as easily, any “Jules” can turn a corner and unexpectedly walk right into undreamt-of success - in business, in love, or just at cards or dice. It is part of the great and inspiring myth of Freedom that anything is possible and perhaps even likely to happen. Random Chance is the great leveler of society - and everyone is subject to its law.

Obviously, volumes could be written about this part of the national psychology, along with its cultural contradictions, but it is so personified in the archetypal character of “Jules the Thief,” that it is essential to point out now, and it will no doubt be a character and a theme to which we will return, again and again.

Continuing the narrative, Jules, in his escape route, follows up the stairwell, where he finds himself in the relative safety of the building’s lower roof. Here, he can sit down and enjoy his meal. Only he’s not alone. Unobserved, Little Kathy emerges up the stairs behind him, and walks up sit next to him. She innocently reaches out to grab a piece of Jules’s food. We pause for a moment - is the little girl in danger?

Not at all. Jules’s response is less intense than The Miser’s had been - after a start, he merely shrugs, grabs another piece of food for himself, then goes on to converse with the little girl as if she were an equal. He has immediately won our hearts over. There is here, as there is always in “Jules,” a kind of basic innocence, in spite of his outlaw ways. And that is because Jules is the ultimate personification of the Great Leveler - he’s hungry, she’s hungry - he’s a thief, she’s a thief - we are ultimately all in the same boat, and he instinctively understands that. His casual acceptance of the little girl sharing his heist, and his matter-of-fact facial expressions and gestures, puts him on a unique level - from this moment forth, the audience will make the identification with this character, and will now see the film through his eyes.

A title card announces the new change in plot: “RUMORS ABOUT THE MISER’S MONEY HAVE ATTRACTED TWO NOTORIOUS HOUSE THIEVES.” We immediately cut to the stairwell again, to see the two “notorious” thieves heading malevolently up the stairs. A cut back to Jules with Kathy quickly establishes the difference between our “thief” with the two sinister characters who are moving up the stairs. Jules gives Kathy some more of his stolen grub, smiles, shaking his head, and waves “bye-bye,”as the little girl begins descending the stairs again.
After checking to see that her mother is still ill in bed, Little Kathy wanders back up to The Miser’s room, offering to share with him the bun she has gotten from Jules. The Miser is touched by the unselfish sharing of such innocence, and the audience can see in his eyes some burgeoning recognition that some things are more important than money.

Meanwhile, the two thieves climb down from the roof via the fire escape and lift up the window to The Miser’s room, surprising both he and Little Kathy, who have both nodded off. The thieves bound and gag the startled Miser. One holds him still, while the other attempts to get into his safe. Even under threats of violence, however, The Miser refuses to give them the combination.

Suddenly, Little Kathy emerges from where she had been sleeping under the covers, and the thieves go for her. Tying the small child with a rope and gag, they threaten to throw her out the window.

We cut back to Jules, who, still on the roof, but below The Miser’s window, is trying to catch a nap of his own in a discarded wooden crate. Another cut reveals Little Kathy being lowered by the thieves out the window by a rope. The cut to a wider shot reveals her peril (and it really does look perilous), as she dangles twenty feet or so above the pavement. A cut back inside the room shows The Miser, terrified, but still not giving in. We see Little Kathy again, and now she drops her dolly, which lands right in front of the snoozing Jules, getting him up with a start.
Seeing the child’s desperate predicament, Jules panics and returns to the streets to summon help. He passes the delivery boy he had stolen from earlier, and he angrily chases him as he passes by.

Meanwhile, back in The Miser’s room, one of the frustrated thieves comes up with a very nasty plan. He picks up a candle he finds in the corner of the room, and sets it underneath the rope, where it will burn away the cord that holds helpless Little Kathy, still dangling outside.
Meanwhile, Jules rushes into the police station to warn them to the little girl’s plight. The angry delivery boy enters, denouncing Jules, and the police drag him back off to the cells.
Meanwhile, the candle’s flame continues to burn on the rope. A close up shows it becoming black in the flame, increasing the tension.

Back at the police station, the extraordinarily stupid police suddenly remember that Jules had been shouting about a child in danger, and they bring him back out. Jules desperately explains the situation (with a quick cut back to the dangling Little Kathy, to remind the audience and quicken their pulses), and this time he is listened to. Jules runs out the door, the police following him.

Successive jump cuts between The Miser’s room and the burning rope and Jules on the street, with non-hurried, apparently mistrustful policemen increase the tension. Another quick close up of the rope strands burning away, while one of the thieves’ hands cruelly spreads the flame brings the climax to its emotional pitch.

The Miser finally agrees to give out the combination, and the fire to the rope is put out. Of course, it should never have come to this close of a point, but Griffith stretches the dramatic tension of the scene as far as he possibly can. One thief hauls Little Kathy back up into the room, while the other opens the safe.

From the street, Jules and the police arrive just in time to see the child being pulled back in the window, and they hurriedly make their way inside, and up the stairwell. Bursting into the room, the police quickly apprehend the thieves in the midst of their robbery.

Alone and safe again, The Miser puts his valuables away, then leads Little Kathy back to her own room, where her mother is finally well enough to be up and about. The Miser explains what has happened, then turns to leave. He turns back, slowly, though, and eyes Little Kathy tearfully. Suddenly, he drops to his knees and hugs her, then rising, eyes still watering, he begins emptying his pockets, enjoining the mother to buy medicine, and “perhaps a new doll.” His heart has finally been touched by love, and we know that he is a now a changed man.

The movie does not end there, however. Wisely and simply, Griffith cuts back to Jules, now alone on the street, who finds an old blanket, then curls up next to a building to go to sleep. The film ends there, and we know who the real hero of the piece is.

Griffith stretches a lot of things in The Miser’s Heart: the length of time needed for The Miser to save Little Kathy, the ridiculously impossible time the rope needs to burn while Jules travels to the police station and back, and the indeterminate placement of Jules (where is this roof he on which he rests, that he can see The Misers’ Room above him?). In the end, these things are bothersome, but they do not crucially harm the picture.

Griffith and company have conveyed an effective little moral melodrama, and in the consequence, have introduced a subtle new psychological dimension to the dramatic palette of film in the fascinating character of Jules, the imperfect, socially disreputable man who instinctively knows what is right and good, and won’t hesitate to risk himself for others.
The role of Jules is a fertile one, as I have said, and will feed American films with their distinctive, lower-class, marginal characters who will cut through the hypocrisy of the social fabric and demonstrate what is best about the American psyche.

It also, in the fabulously nonchalant performance of Lionel Barrymore, introduces us, however briefly, to the concept of a unique kind of movie star that will revolutionize film history.