The Burglar's Dilemma

The Burglar’s Dilemma (1912) - This early suspense crime film predates Alfred Hitchcock by over a decade, and deals with themes that the great director will explore all throughout his career. Written by Lionel Barrymore, The Burglar’s Dilemma is a neat little exploration of the "wrong man" theme. However, rather than using point-of-view shots to create a sense of audience identification, this film relies more upon acting to get the job done.

Barrymore himself co-stars in the film as "The Householder," a large, hale, good-natured wealthy man. He appears to be the source of support for his brother, labelled "The Weakling," played with nervous complexity by Henry B. Walthall (Dandy Jack of Friends, sans moustache here).

The mood seems to be established by body language (and body size) between the two actors. Barrymore is relaxed, gregarious and confident. Walthall is diminutive, withdrawn and edgy. As the film begins, the two brothers sit side by side in the older brother’s home library, reading and chatting.

Suddenly, a flurry of people arrive to toast the elder brothers birthday (among them, both the beautiful Gish sisters). An intercard informs us what we can already discern on the screen - the younger brother is jealous of his sibling’s friends.

As a matter of fact, everything about Walthall seems diminished next to the open, well-grounded Barrymore. This is definitely a film with a back story that the viewer must supply for himself. Why is the younger brother defined as "The Weakling?" It’s certainly not as if his smaller stature is preventing him from pursuing a worthwhile career due to his physical stature. We’re not exactly in the jungle here.

One gets the sense that Walthall has had to live in the shadow of his older, larger, more successful brother all his life, and now he is dependent upon him. We can read the resentment on his face, the envy, the lack of self esteem. Of course big-brother Barrymore is so generous and magnanimous that Walthall’s sense of guilt and resentment are grounded in his very being. It is his dependency on his older brother that makes him a "Weakling," not any physical characteristics.

One can speculate about the history of these brothers’ relationships, going back to infancy, but we can only infer so much. The film seems to want to glibly place all the guilt on the younger brother, and have the audience side against him. He is such a pitiful bundle of nerves, however, a crushed shell of a human being, that I cannot help but feel at least sad curiosity, if not pity, for what this man has gone through, both externally and internally.

Of course, we will never know precisely what Griffith or Barrymore intended here, but Walthall’s bizarre performance definitely speak loudly to bring in the suspicion of a deeply pathological situation - and perhaps the older brother’s smiling indulgence of his "weak" sibling keeps himself in a perpetually superior position, one that he perhaps uses as a prop for his own false self esteem.

It is impossible to arrive definitively at this proposed subtext of the film, but it is equally impossible to dismiss it, or keep from noticing that there is something definitely wrong with this picture. Psychologically, The Burglar’s Dilemma is a demanding, mysterious portrait of which conjecture can only take us so far.

Meanwhile, in the parallel story, which gives the film its title, we meet a fledgling young thief, played with a charismatic blend of innocent freshness and frank sexual allure by a 19-year-old actor by the name of Robert Harron. It is apparent right from the first shot that Harron is obviously a natural-born movie star - the beginning of a breed that would continue throughout Hollywood history in such remarkable incarnations as Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando and even the young Tom Cruise. It is impossible to point to a prototype for this kind of charactor/actor before the emergence of the popular cinema. Presumably, the theatre had always had handsome young charismatics that personified the irresistible charm of such "good/bad" boys, but it would take a medium the size, scope and penetration of cinema to create an authentic piece of American mythology from this type.

(All too unfortunately, and as if to cast a pale shadow of doom across his persona, young Bobby Harron died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1920, whether accidentally or suicidally, no one can definitively say. Thus Harron was, tragically, a pioneer as well for the young, conflicted doomed martyr - a premonition of such great American myths as James Dean, River Phoenix and Heath Ledger. Before his death, Harron would continue as a leading figure in such Griffith blockbusters as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. Almost completely forgotten today, he laid down a very early pattern and mold for a certain type of anti-hero that Americans would embrace in their films and their culture up until this day.)

Harron is shown here as the apprentice burglar, being tutored and manipulated by the older criminal, played here by Harry Carey with his usual sense of ominous menace. Carey has plotted for Harron to break into Barrymore’s opulent home, and with a bit of threatening intimidation, convinces the hesitant boy to go through with it.

Meanwhile, Barrymore’s younger brother is becoming drunk on wine. The visitors leave, and Walthall approaches Barrymore for some cash. Though big brother good-naturedly rises to present him with some, Walthall insists on more, and finally, flying into a rage, knocks his older brother to the floor. In his drunken confusion, he believes he has killed him and begins to panic. Conveniently for him, however, Harron enters the house through a window, flashlight in hand and begins stalking through the house, looking for valuables. Walthall immediately grasps the opportunity to shift the blame for the accidental homicide onto the young intruder. He hurries into the street to summon the police for help.

Alone in the darkened library, Harron comes across Barrymore’s outstretched body on the floor and is horrified. Walthall returns with the police, who grab the now-hysterical Harron and apparently catch him just after the act of murder.

The scenes which follow are still terrifying to watch. Harron, the young, unseasoned apprentice, out on his first tentative job, has suddenly dropped into an inconceivable nightmare. He knows that he is innocent, but the fact remains that he is a burglar, and no one is going to believe in his denials of murder. He is trapped, with nowhere to turn, no one to believe him, and the real "killer" hugging nearby, unbeknown to every one but the members of the audience.

This, of course, is a device that Hitchcock would develop over and over again, to great and masterly affect - supply the audience with more information than the characters on the screen, then sit helplessly squirming as the hapless victim twists and turns in his apparently hopeless dilemma. Griffith, in 1912, had not developed the cinematic language that would cause the viewer to participate in the ordeal of the entrapped individual, thus vicariously sharing his plight. But the film is still very effective, and one wonders if the Great Master ever saw this short film, which might have inspired him with all of its rich suggestiveness.

Two plainclothes detectives arrive to interrogate the frightened boy. John T. Dillon and the menacing Alfred Paget (the villain/hero of The Lesser Evil) play one of the first recorded instances of "good cop/bad cop" on Harron while the guilty Walthall squirms in the background. The evidence mounts, as the detectives find a hammer and a blackjack in the boy’s jacket. They drag him back into the library, and Paget pushes him down to the floor to accusatively face his dead "victim." Meanwhile, in the next room, Walthall is going insane with fear, unable to sit or keep still, pulling compulsively at his hair. The entire scenario is frightfully intense and unnerving.

The medics arrive to look at the "body," while Harron is dragged back into the next room, the beefy detectives bookcasing him in a close, claustrophobic shot while he breaks down in tears and denial. Paget screams into his face threateningly, and one can almost hear Harron’s anguished cries of "I didn’t do it!" Dillon, the other detective, turns the boy around and attempts to calm him. Paget pulls him back, shouting at him abusively, waving the blackjack menacingly in his face. Dillon, the good cop, attempts to reassure him to get a confession, and Harron completely breaks down.

Griffith cuts back and forth from this scene to shots of Walthall alone, presumably watching, and fidgeting with Doesteyevsky-esque anxiety. This is as feverish a pitch as we have seen, emotionally speaking, in any film with which I am familiar.

Suddenly the tension is broken open by a tremendously powerful shot of enormous revelation. The library door suddenly opens, and out steps the "dead" Barrymore, his eyes dark and glazed. The police and the boy all turn with expressions of shock, as does his guilty brother, whom Griffith has just pulled into the far right of the frame, so that the two men are directly facing one another. Everyone expresses their great relief at his survival, except for the guilty brother, whose face goes to shock.

Questioned by the police, Barrymore exonerates Harron, all the while shooting the deadliest of gazes at his brother’s face, who finally turns away. Harron lights a cigarette in ecstatic relief. Barrymore continues his stare at Walthall who gazes away anxiously, waiting to be revealed.
The police carry the happy young burglar away, leaving the two brothers to face each other alone in a moment of incredible tension. Walthall finally looks to Barrymore, guiltily, sadly, then looks away. What will his injured brother do?

Returning to the library, Walthall sits down to await his fate. He shoves the glass of wine away that helped bring him to his rash action with a shamed sense of disgust. Back in the hallway, we can watch Barrymore’s searching face as he reflects on what to do. Slowly, he turns around and follows behind his brother.

Pausing at the door, he puts on a smile and tenderly touches his brother on the back. Walthall sits looking downward still, frightened and ashamed. Barrymore pities him, magnanimously shrugs off the incident, lights a cigarette and finally turns to shake hands with his very relieved brother.

This action happens so quickly that the modern audience is likely to disbelieve it. But Barrymore is so effective - we can actually observe him thinking and making the decision to put on a bright face to save his brother from suffering. It is a towering gesture of magnanimity, and we can equally see not only the relief reflected in Walthall’s reaction, but an honest glow of redemption, as he realizes that his brother loves and cares for him even at this level. We see all jealousy and animosity depart instantly from his face for the first time, as the camera fades on the scene.

Rejoining the parallel plot, we see that Harron, the young would-be burglar, is being released after serving time for breaking and entering. Walking down the street, he is quickly accosted by the elder crook, Harry Carey, who wants the boy back to do some other criminal mischief. Harron shakes his head emphatically and begins to back away. Quickly coming to his rescue is the "good" detective (Dillon) and another police officer who sternly warn Carey to stay away from the boy. Defeated, Carey stiffly adjusts his tie and departs. Harron smiles effusively, thanking the policemen for his new chance at life and departs.

Thus the film ends, both plot points completely resolved by the triumph of human concern and caring hearts. It is interesting to see just how dark Griffith can make a film, only to pull it back just at the end, based upon his belief in the inherent goodness of man. One can only imagine The Burglar’s Dilemma if it were left to be concluded by someone of Fritz Lang’s disposition.

This simplicity is indeed lovely, but it must be admitted that Griffith’s naivety and optimism tend to undermine the situations that he so effectively sets up. We begin to consider that this is the perhaps-fatal flaw that will doom his future work. But then again, we also remember that this is still only 1912, and we have just watched one of the most powerful dramas yet created by what is by this point, unquestionably the greatest film maker in the world.

The New York Hat (1912)

This is one of my favorites among Griffith’s Biograph films, and it is amazing what a world of difference there is between this small-town comedy of manners and the shady, pre-expressionist world of The Musketeers of Pig Alley, made just a few weeks before. The variety of genres that Griffith explored - and helped to define - is truly staggering. What’s even more impressive is the assured sense that what is by now his complete professionalism allows him to present such a masterly stamp on works of quite various sensibilities and tone.

The New York Hat stars a 20-year-old Mary Pickford (easily playing a much younger teen) whose mother (Kate Bruce) dies in the opening scene. Before she passes, however, she manages to slip a box to the attending minister, played by Lionel Barrymore. Back in his church office, the minister opens the box to discover some money, along with a note requesting him to buy her daughter Mary a few fineries that her tightwad father would never allow her to have.

A little later, we see young, beautiful Mary dreaming of having a new hat. She asks the old skinflint (Charles Hill Mailes - also the father in The Painted Lady, a skinny nanny goat of an old man with a pointed beard that looks as though it were ready to discharge) if she could possibly get one, but the old geezer brushes her off.

Meanwhile, the ladies of the town are all abuzz concerning the new arrival of an elaborately fashioned hat from New York at the local store, a feathered affair costing the ridiculously exorbitant price of $10. Barrymore observes Pickford admiring the hat through the window, and once she departs, he enters the store and purchases it, much to the shock and inflamed curiosity of the old biddies inside. Who is the object of the handsome young preacher’s affection?

Lionel Barrymore gives an outstanding performance as the minister. His humaneness contrasts eloquently against the fussy, petty self-importance of his fellow town members (and parishioners). Those who are only familiar with the older Barrymore, playing confined to a wheelchair in the 1930s and ‘40s will be amazed at the outsized charisma of this wonderful actor. His portrayal is a masterpiece of understated kindness and empathy, and his intelligent magnaminity places him far above his fellows, yet he does not deign to condescend to them. He is wonderfully human, as displayed by the involuntary laughter he releases on first discovering the letter, as well as the quite sincere look of concern that he exhibits when the situation becomes convoluted and the town is in hysterics. One gets the impression that he cares not so much for clearing his reputation as he is for both exonerating Mary and putting his fussy, outraged town members at ease.

Mary Pickford is splendidly beautiful, absolutely coquettish in her girlish innocence. When the fabulous hat arrives at her home without explanation, she gushes with wonder, much like a surprised Cinderella, then playfully admires herself in the mirror, wearing the ostentatious bonnet.

Of course, she cannot explain the hat to her father, so she lets him go on ahead to church on Sunday morning. She delays, donning the beautiful hat and follows after. Naturally, when she gets to the church, the elaborate headpiece turns everyone’s head, standing out as it does like a grand May festival in the midst of a dowdy February of plain-town fashion.

Knowing that the hat had been purchased by the minister, the holier-than-thou gossips (led by the marvelously parsimonious Claire McDowell (the Spinster of The Sunbeam), begin to swelter in the heat of their fastidiously incensed sense of proprietary outrage. After the service, they call together the entire church board, consisting of themselves, as well and assemblage fuddy-duddy old geezers (presumably their husbands), and it is decided that the minister must make a reckoning.

First they encounter Mary’s crotchety old father who is absolutely scandalized at hearing the news. He rushes home, finds the beautiful new hat, and to Mary’s horror, pulverizes it in a fit of self-righteous indignation. Beside herself with shock and grief, Mary insists that she does not know where the hat came from, but the old billy-goat gruff refuses to believe her. He rushes down to the church to confront the minister for himself.

Meanwhile, public indignity has been brought to a boil, and the members of the church board hammer away at the minister’s office door. Faced with this ridiculous mob, he tries to restore calm. When the old father arrives to join the fray, he reluctantly pulls out Mary’s poor mother’s note and lets them read it. Chastened by the guilt of their judgmental self effrontery, the church board slips home in quiet embarrassment. The men sniff indignantly at the gossipy biddies as they step away from them outside, forgetting that their own sense of moral outrage had been so recently kindled as well.

Back in the office, Mary arrives, and the minister lets her see the note, and she is shocked to discover that it was the minister himself that had purchased the hat for her, with the savings left by her dead mother. The minister finally gets the old miser to agree to allow him provide Mary with occasional frills - why not? it’s not costing the old bugger anything - and the film concludes happily.

Griffith has such a reputation for being morally and socially Victorian, so The New York Hat is a welcome revelation of his larger concerns for legitimate human values as contrasted against "proper" social hypocrisy. Special credit, though, must go to the co-writers of the screenplay, both of them women.

Anita Loos wrote the story - she had debuted in film writing by collaborating with Griffith on The Musketeers of Pig Alley, no less. Also receiving a co-writing credit on this, her first project, is Frances Marion, who would go on to become possibly the most renowned female writer in Hollywood, penning scripts for Mary Pickford, among others, up until the 1930s. It is undoubtedly true that the penetrating insights of these two, uniquely observant females must have provided a great deal of the insight into the perspective of this drama. But it is also a fact that Griffith not only embraced their story, but gave it a coherent vision through his mis-en-scene and his deft direction of the actors.

This movie is an absolute delight and very revelatory in the way that Griffith (and others) would treat the situations of women. One of the delights in the film is in the first line of Mary’s late mother in her letter to the minister: "My husband worked me to death." I think only a woman would have been perceptive and witty enough to write this, and no doubt the many women in the audience could too easily relate to it.

The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)

This is one of Griffith’s most famous Biograph shorts, and it is generally acknowledged to be the first "gangster film," thus setting off one of the major genres in American (and world) cinema. Perhaps more important than the criminal characterizations is the rough, threatening world of the modern urban environment. Here, in "The Other Part of New York," we are first given witness to the dangerous world of the crowded city streets - a place where criminals prowl and an underground economy functions. Some have argued that The Musketeers of Pig Alley is the first film noir. I cannot go that far. That post-World War II genre has many more elements than are on display here, but there is no question that the film is ground-breaking, and no doubt influential, in the what will be the subsequent development of one of cinema’s most poetically fecund streams.

Indeed, it is the look and feel of Musketeers that gives the film its most unique character. We recognize immediately the feel of the "mean streets" that the ne’er-do-well characters inhabit. Though set in the daytime, the characters move in a world of shadows, and Griffith brilliantly enhances their bug-like sneakiness by having his criminal characters move slowly, hugging walls, always on the alert, always on the prowl.

The streets of The Musketeers of Pig Alley will become part and parcel of the American dreamscape over the coming century. The film is important because it lays down so many of the earliest conventions that will define a great part of the mythic landscape of America.

Griffith must be given great credit for this remarkable one-reeler, since it is so stylishly done, so smoothly established - and it is quite different in look and feel from so many of his other films. His instinct (if not his intellect - which is probably more accurate) told him that he needed to adjust the style to the subject matter, and this he certainly did, most skillfully. It is for visions such as this that we regard film makers as more than just craftsmen, but as artists.

One great decision, and a hallmark of cinema that further distances itself from theatrical drama, is the fact that Musketeers was shot on actual New York locations. The verisimilitude that the actual urban landscape provides is a kind of alchemy - it molds an environment to the demands of a work of art. It is this recognition of possibility that will help transform cinema into a completely distinctive artistic field - for which it is already well on its way by 1912, thanks in no small part to Griffith himself.

The environments, the shadows, the movements of the characters are all here, freshly discovered, and beginning here they will become encoded into a kind of iconography that will resonate with audiences down to the present day. Indeed, Martin Scorsese reportedly studied The Musketeers of Pig Alley extensively in planning the shooting of his own 21st century crime epic, Gangs of New York. No doubt he wished to see the look of lower Manhattan as close to the time of his tale as he could. But he could have discovered the precedents he sought in the countless thousands of films that Musketeers has inspired and emulated.

Another remarkable aspect of The Musketeers of Pig Alley is the acting, which is stylized - as is in almost all films of the period - but at the same time prescient in its depiction of the kinds of characters that we will see throughout the next century. Indeed, perhaps the most striking thing about the film is the performance of Elmer Booth as the haughty gang leader, Snapper Kid. We watch Booth’s sassy, street-wise character in astonishment, recognizing right there the living prototype for such future screen wiseguys as James Cagney. As a matter of fact, one must wonder whether the young Cagney studied Booth’s performance before his bravura, star-making turn in The Public Enemy (1931). One would be foolish to dismiss Cagney’s acting innovations and natural charisma, but to cite that there is a definite precedent here is to ask some very interesting questions.

If Cagney did not emulate Booth’s performance, just what is it about the milieu of the "mean streets" that lends such a such a manic, slightly unhinged swagger to the playing of such an urban character? This style will thrive and survive, from Paul Muni down to Robert DeNiro. Is its genesis really here, in Booth’s performance? Or is the reality the actual characters the film makers and actors actually observed on the streets of New York? Do these gangsters and hoods actually have their own kind of "dance" that carries them through the squalor of their lives, lending them the illusion of power and the reality of personality?

Whatever its source and genesis, Elmer Booth’s performance is a masterpiece here. Unfortunately, Booth is little known and his acting career was untimely cut short by his death in an automobile accident three years later. Had he survived, perhaps even made it as a Hollywood star into the 1920s, we might have a much different history - and perspective - of this type of acting phenomenon than we do today.

All the small parts in Musketeers are superb, though - at least on the gangster side of the fence. The marvelous Lilian Gish co-stars (along with the cheery faced young Walter Miller as her musician husband), but here in this setting, even she is overshadowed not only by Booth’s Snapper Kid, but many of the other heavies’ roles that serve as quite minor characters in the narrative.

Especially outstanding is the brooding Harry Carey, who as Snapper’s sidekick, forms a dour counterpart to his more animated companion. Carey just looks plain dangerous, if not crazy - he is silent trouble waiting to happen. His eyes and scowl simply mean menace, and in an eerily creepy, patient way. In one scene, as he moves along silently behind Snapper, he can be seen calmly flipping a coin - a code for waiting danger - a full 20 years before George Raft would repeat the trick so famously in Scarface.

Of quite a different cut is the menacing brow of the rival gang leader, played with both flirtatious flair and stoic ferocity of Alfred Paget (the ship captain in The Lesser Evil). Adding even more color and weight to the ensemble is the unknown (to me) actor portraying the "Big Boss" - a menacing power proved potent by his tuxedo, as well as his ability to stop a fight just by showing his face. The hierarchy in the gang structure is established quickly and easily, even if their business is not, and these characters will long inhabit the screen, projecting their differences, as well as their power.

What The Musketeers of Pig Alley does not have, however, is much of a plot. This, really, is not too much of a flaw, since the film is all about character, environment, movement and light. It begins in the tiny apartment of the young couple - Gish and Miller, looking altogether healthy, wholesome and pathetic. Miller is a poor musician who must travel somewhere to make a little money. Also a resident in this little room is Gish’s old, ailing mother, who lives in a chair in a corner just long enough to die onscreen. (Griffith’s attempt at added pathos here simply results in a relief that she is out of the way, and the picture can continue.)

When Gish (identified solely as "The Little Lady") exits the house on an errand, she immediately becomes the prey of the bold flirtations of Flapper Kid. Even here, though, Snapper appears more playful than menacing. As he attempts a little peck on the cheek, Gish slaps him away, sending him into a momentary rage of apoplexy, a murderous shock of unexpected affrontment that must be physically restrained by Harry Carey. He quickly regains his composure, however, responding to the rough rebuff by a fascinated, perhaps admiring glare at Gish as she stomps away out of the frame. Snapper’s not used to assertive women like this, and he tips back his hat, scratching his head.

A crowded sidewalk scene gives the viewer the sense of populous claustrophobia in the big city, an immediate environmental argument for the behavior of such souls lost in the big shuffle of life. Gish moves testily through the crowd. Griffith cuts back to Snapper, now all grins, indicating that she’s "his kind of dame," then cockily pushes his hat down over his brow, and with hand in sleeves, jauntily pursues her. His partner, Harry Carey, merely looks on impassively like a mute monster of doom, then hikes up his trousers to follow his leader.

The crowd theme grows massive as we finally are introduced to Pig Alley itself. The place is nothing less than that - an alleyway, and small at that. Here, dozens, perhaps a hundred denizens of the city gather to socialize, drink, revel and romance. It is as if the entire neighborhood is here, including children, sitting in the foreground. In the hapless, overcrowded world of the city’s underclass, it is only an alley that allows any flourishment or commerce of life.

Snapper and his pals sneak in like rats, converging in the foreground. Everyone is smoking cigarettes, something we have not seen much in films before. It quickly establishes the habit as class related, subliminally associating it with vice and the coolness of street-class urbanity.

As the musician returns home with his pay, he is followed by Snapper and companion, then quickly waylaid - beaten and robbed - just outside his door.As the poor sap goes back out on the street looking for his money, wifey Gish is visited by a ridiculously ebullient girlfriend (Madge Kirby, the Little Sister of The Painted Lady) arrives determined to take her moping friend out on the town with her.

The two young ladies leave, arriving at "The Mobster’s Ball," a crowded, jumping drinking and dancing hall watched over by the "Big Boss." Snapper and Carey arrive, snaking their way around the scene. Two well-dressed young men recognize Snapper and immediately hop up to give the gangsters their seats. The ladies arrive, and the gregarious friend introduces a recalcitrant Gish around, before quickly joining in the festivities on the dance floor.

Snapper and Carey watch as Gish is approached by the rival, Paget, who asks Gish to dance. Snapper hops up, but is restrained by the more cautious Carey. Gish declines the offer, but does join Paget as he escorts her into an adjoining room for a drink. Snapper rises and slowly stalks after them. Slowly appearing behind the couple, now sitting at a table chatting over drinks, Snapper suddenly explodes. The quick movement from stillness into violent action is electrifying - Snapper quickly grabs the glass from Gish’s hand and smashes it, then turns to strike his rival across the face, an angry sneer spread across his mug.

The two gangsters are quickly separated by the "Big Boss" who tells them both to take it outside. Gish leaves first. Snapper stares his rival down and cooly issues his threat with a pointed finger in the chest. He exits the room slowly, then picks up with Carey back in the dance hall. They turn to exit, but are quickly faced by Paget and one of his lackeys - each gangster staring the other down while the "Big Boss" stands imperiously in between them, his very presence preventing any more shenanigans on the premises.

Snapper gives a sly smile and exits with Carey. Paget, his eyes all menace, returns to the bar. The crisis of the story has reached its peak - the rest of the film will be the suspenseful buildup of the showdown between the two criminals.

Griffith next begins to set up parallel story lines of the two gangs slowly stalking about the streets, each looking for the other. Jump cuts to sequences of shots of roughly equal time set up the situation and build tension. It is a particularly effective device, and one that while natural to this type of story, could easily be applied to other genres. (One immediately thinks of westerns, where two gunslingers could be stalking about the same town, both in search of a showdown.)

Snapper thrusts his hand forward in his jacket pocket - the first time I have seen this action in a film - to suggest he has a gun. At one point, standing at a bar, he pulls out his revolver and gives it a little spin, confirming for the audience that he is indeed armed. One can feel the film building up to a violent climax.

In a very striking, pre-Expressionist shot, we witness a door open and see a shadow cover it, preceding Snapper and his gang before their entrance. It is delightful to see Griffith playing with effects to establish a mood - something that will of course be a hallmark of full-blown film noir. In another shot, the rival gang passes before a store front window in which all their reflections are clearly, and quite deliberately, visible. Such touches not only heighten the action, but help to elaborate the language of film.

Snapper and his gang (which now includes a third member) make their way back to a now nearly-empty Pig Alley. A great comic moment bursts the tension as a Chinese man accidently brushes into Snapper from behind, sending him, in his jumpy state, into a momentary panic. Recovering himself when he sees what it is, he laughs both at the situation and himself. As his gang leaves the alley, we see the rival’s gang creeping slowly around a corner and hugging against the wall slowly, following them.

One of the most powerful shots comes as Snapper and his gang come around a corner and move toward the camera on the right-hand side of the screen, their faces gradually pulling into such threateningly severe close ups that the audience was sure to feel their menace about to pour into the theatre around them. It is a very bold shot, but it is done with subtlety and a sure hand. Nowhere does Griffith allow any of these effects to distract from his narrative - in fact, they only work to heighten the tension that is building.

The rival gang, in their game of cat and mouse, sneak back into a now-desolate Pig Alley, where they all hide, behind juts of walls and trash cans, to set up an ambush. Snapper and his boys enter the frame slowly, cautiously surveying the seemingly empty place. Suddenly, the screen erupts in a hail of gunfire that must have caused audiences in 1912 to jump from their seats. Several gangsters on both sides drop dead, but Snapper backs away and escapes. In doing so, he inadvertently backs into his former victim, the young musician, who is out searching for his money. In the heat of the moment, the musician is able to snatch his wallet back from Snapper, who cannot properly react, as he is naturally preoccupied with the gunfight, and soon he has to move back in action.

Immediately, Pig Alley is covered by a swarm of policemen, who quickly shut down the mutual slaughter and begin the incarcerations of the survivors. Snapper gets away from the clutches of a cop by temporarily blinding him and running off, but the staggering officer recovers and gives pursuit.

Back inside the little apartment, a depressed Gish is surprised by her husband’s entrance with his recovered money. They grasp each other in ecstatic celebration.

Meanwhile, just outside their door, Snapper is still in the process of getting away from the law. He runs and knocks on their door, and when it is opened, he bursts inside. Shocked to see both Gish and the musician together, he reminds the young lady of just who he is, then grasps her arm as if to drag her away. The husband quickly pulls his bride back. Snapper, enraged, advances as if to strike him, but Gish intercedes. She explains that the musician is her husband, much to Snapper’s shock and disbelief.

Elmer Booth plays through many ranges of emotion very quickly here. He goes from shock to anger to a befuddled quizzing at the beautiful girl’s choice of partners, scratching his head as if to say, "If that don’t beat all!" Finally, he shrugs the whole thing off, and exits with a smile and a wave. The performance brilliantly encapsulates the gangster’s natural combination of hair-trigger instincts with a jaunty capacity for emotional adjustment that makes him a successful survivor of life on the streets. He stops in his tracks again and approaches the musician, as if comparing himself to him. Finally, he brushes the whole thing away, accepting what he can’t understand and leaves.

With incredible economy and charisma, Booth here sets a pattern for the classic gangster portraiture that will become mythologized down through the century. We will meet this fascinating character again and again - and American audiences will never tire of him. He is violent, unpredictable, wise, sarcastic and funny. He commands our attention - he frightens and attracts us at the same time. We love him because he fascinates us - we never know what he is going to do next. There is a powerful sexual streak in him that attracts men (as admirers) just as much as it does women. There is obviously a very complex psychology of this character, the analysis of which could (and has) filled volumes. The amazing thing is that the character appears here so fully formed.

Back outside, Snapper is immediately nabbed by his police pursuer. He argues that he has been inside the apartment the entire time, and the cop drags him back to check out his story. Pushing their way inside, Snapper confronts the couple and tells the young couple to confirm to the cop that he has been there with them all along and could not have been involved with the alley shootout. He gives them a quick, knowing wink.

A title card appears, announcing "One Good Turn Deserves Another." The young couple quickly confirms Snapper’s story, while Snapper stares back at the cop with such an indescribably sarcastic face of false innocence which is really smugness. His performance is simply extraordinary.

Now off the hook, both the cop and Snapper leave the apartment, Snapper turning back quickly to give them a sign of both gratitude and "we got away with it" insouciance.
Back out on the street, the cop lectures Snapper about staying out of trouble, while Snapper, slyly smiling, nods his head and casually lights a cigarette. He is left alone again on the street, a free man.

It seems to me that the film should end here, and I must confess that I do not understand the actual ending. A title card displays, "Links In the System," then cuts back to Snapper, standing as before. An unknown hand enters the frame from the right, holding a pile of cash. Snapper stands stunned for a moment, then takes the money. We cut back to the apartment and the happy couple for the final shot.

What has just happened? Who has given Snapper the money and why? Is it the "Big Boss," rewarding him for playing his part so well and not harming the couple? How would he know about it, and what’s the whole affair to him?

The implication is that no action goes unwatched in the city’s criminal underworld - and that eventually, the seeming "free agent" is going to have to pay - or in this case, be paid - for ultimately doing the wrong or the right thing. If Griffith’s message here is that the criminals are all linked into a massive web that is beyond their control, it is certainly understated here and not really bourne out by the rest of the text of the film.

The action does add one final irony to the tale, however, in an ending filled with ironies. The entire scenario introduces layers of contradictory interpretations of morality that will fill the gangster film with unanswerable questions throughout its long history. What, indeed, is the correct thing to do in a corrupt world? When one’s environment is filled with criminals, and controlled by criminals, exactly to whom and what does the citizen hold his allegiance?

Snapper’s "good turn" is simply not to do any further violence to the young couple. In return (or perhaps in fear?), they do not turn him over to the police. Snapper is then "rewarded" for his noble behavior as a criminal for not going past someone’s imaginary line of behavior.

In form, style, and in the deep implications of social and moral philosophy, The Musketeers of Pig Alley goes a tremendously long way to establishing the very core of one of American cinema’s most potent and fecund fields of mythology. That Griffith succeeded so well in discovering, as well as conveying, so much on the subject on its maiden voyage is a testament both to the sensitivity of his artistry and the fascinating depths of his subject matter.

The Musketeers of Pig Alley is, amazingly, a sheer masterpiece of early film making - one that shows not only how far cinema had developed in just a short decade, but opening up the curtain to reveal a vast underground world of drama and grammar to be explored more and more deeply in the world to come.