Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The Lesser Evil

The Lesser Evil (1912) - Well, this is an action-thriller, a cut-to-the-chase jump-cut race against time that goes back to Rescued by Rover (1905), at least, and that Griffith had somewhat crudely attempted with his first outing, Adventures of Dollie (1908). But this is quite a bit more elaborate than these early outings, with lots of realistic action, over a hundred shots, and a simmering sexuality, too boot.

The sexual threat is important here - it is at the heart of the film, as it will be at the heart of The Birth of a Nation. I think that it is important to note that here, as well as in the great controversial later epic, Griffith shows an essentially puritanical view of sexuality that equates it with violence. Here, Blanche Sweet (who never seems that innocent to me for some reason), has been captured by a rough gang of sailors and has been hijacked aboard their ship.

This is, admittedly, pretty stern stuff. Blanche is locked up in a cabin as the ship sets sail, after having been bound and gagged and brought on board. There is nothing ffor her to do except to wait helplessly for the inevitable gang rape that is going to come once they are out to sea. Quite shocking in its sado-masochistic frankness, the mind cannot help but reel at the vision of all these vicious, hungry male animals ravishing sweet Blanche, the helpless solo blonde maiden. It is a disturbing image, and depending on one’s fringe of fantasy susceptibility, a powerfully erotic one.

I cannot pretend to delve into D.W. Griffith’s sexual psyche here - suppositions are all we have to go on - that is, in addition to the aggressive male action and the passive helplessness of the female. One can be sure, however, that the film must have stimulated in both its male and female audiences, various ranges of arousal, as well as repulsion.

In the puritan’s mind, however, sex is always the great threat. It is ultimately the repression of the sexual urges that lend such fantasies their intense power. The resolution, therefore, is to kill them off - to defuse them so that they won’t be troubling the conscious mind any more. And that is precisely what happens in this film - as it will in many thousands of films to come. The id running amok is precisely the thing which must be snuffed out, put back into its box, and be re-directed into the wholesome context of marriage.

Of course I am not making an argument for rape here, but it is worth pointing out that under the guise of Victorian propriety, this is virtually the only subconscious outlet for (particularly female) sexual fantasy. To be ravished - especially at sea, tossed upon the rough-galed forces of fate - may be a nightmare, but it is also the only kind of erotic action in which a female could cultivate without concomitant feelings of guilt. Similarly, in the male, the viewer could imagine the vicarious actions of the crew, whilst mentally disassociating himself from them them, due to their lower-class status and brutish demeanor.

It would be wonderful to have a commentary on this film by Freud, who probably could have easily seen it had he been so inclined. It would be fascinating to have his opinion upon such plainly disguised erotic fantasies being (literally) projected out into the popular consciousness.

But returning to the film, as I said before, the raging id must be stopped. Here, it is turned back by the very mechanic of the abduction itself - the head smuggler himself, played by the burly, mustachioed Alfred Paget. Once aboard ship, this brute among brutes realizes the enormity of the transgression about to take place, and even he is moved to stop the lusty boatmen from having their way with Blanche.

We do not see any sense of epiphany in Paget that reveals to him that this deed is wrong and must be stopped. He simply, suddenly, has a change of heart and stands before the young girls' cabin, holding off the approaching, menacing crew with a gun - even shooting one, presumably to death.

Back in the cabin with Blanche, Paget realizes he has but one bullet left. He manages to convince Blanche to let him shoot her in the head rather than have to suffer the fate of the mass violation. Weepily, Blanche agrees. And here we have it, the "lesser evil" of the film’s title. In the puritan mind, it is better to die and be saved the disgrace and horror of unbridled lust. Today, we would be - to my mind quite rightly - more concerned about the victim’s ultimate survival against any other consideration.

One could argue that Blanche might very well face death anyway, after her rapists are through with her - but we will always side with the possibility of life. At any rate, this is not really the question here. This is not a realistic episode of life - it is a fantasy in a popular motion picture. And within this fantasy, the conflicts must be cleanly worked out on the screen to relieve the psychic situation. Death must henceforth come before dishonor, and the frenzied sado-masochistic fantasies of both the characters and the audience must be put cleanly back in the box if we are all to regain our sense of self control.

Of course, the now-conventional rescue of the heroine by benevolent males - in this case, Blanche’s fisherman boyfriend (Edwin August) and the policemen on a speedboat - manages to avoid the horrific climax by arriving to save the day.

Here, the rescue is anti-climactic (literally), however. The compensatory violent antidote to the emotional orgasmic substitute - Blanche getting her brains blown out by the now-benevolent, but still sexual Paget - is neatly avoided.

What is remarkable about The Lesser Evil, however, is Griffith’s tacit acknowledgment that this is indeed the case. As the would-be rapist smugglers are being subdued by the police, Blanche watches with private pleasure as Paget escapes unseen from the back of the ship, slipping into the sea.

Back ashore, we watch Paget emerge triumphantly from the roaring water, a free man, reveling in glory as in a fabulous rebirth. This is one of the most astonishing shots in all of Griffith’s works, and it conjures up a mighty plethora of possible interpretations. This victorious emergence from the sea and the avoidance of capture feels, and is, highly ambiguous. We can posit that Paget is a new man after having had a change of heart and saving Blanche from her terrible fate. That would probably be Griffith’s explanation of it. There is, however, a lingering sense that a powerful life force that transcends good and evil is precisely what survives.

Griffith reinforces this last interpretation with the shots of a delighted Blanche, silently watching Paget’s escape with great, excited delight, back aboard the ship. Even her sweet fisherman boyfriend, her rescuer, gets slighted and goes unnoticed as Blanche stares back anxiously to the shore.

Somewhere out there, the film seems to suggest, lies Blanche’s true desire - the discovery of an erotic power in life that thrills even as it threatens. One can sense the tingles in her body after her powerful scrape with brutal sexuality and violent death.

The question becomes, is this a conscious decision by the "author" of the film? Or is this the quintessential puritan letting his inner, repressed desires be unwittingly put on display?

It is impossible to know for sure, but this will certainly not be the last time such sexual ambiguities will spill out onto the screen. Like dreams, that is where they will cluster and accumulate, ever reflective of our deepest individual, as well as collective psyches.

Monday, December 17, 2007

One Is Business, The Other Crime

One Is Business, The Other Crime (1912) - While this is not a great film, I have a strong affection for it, due to its egalitarian sense of justice. Of course, while the text of the film is nothing new, it is refreshing to see that in the new mass-media art form of cinema, strong attempt was being made to address the differences between class.

Of course, this is something that Griffith had always done, at least since A Corner in Wheat (1909). What we receive, is of course, not a condemnation of capitalism, or even of class divisions, but the insistence of the same moral code be applicable to all. Any neo-Marxist criticism aside, I believe that it is profoundly important that these issues were discussed at all, and particularly with such insistence on the economic disparities in modern society.

The film reveals, once again, D.W. Griffith’s passion for justice, compounded with his typical distrust of modern society. It is not that the events in this film could not have occurred at any other time - it is more important that the film fits into a larger pattern of film statements, which taken together, display a profound distrust for the modern capitalist era. Griffith is no revolutionary, however. His solutions, here as always, are rooted in the verities of what seem to be a nobler past. In short, Griffith continues to paint himself as a traditionalist moralist. It is in his collision with the modern world, and ironically, his mastery of this most modern form of communication, that we find the strangely unique intersection of colliding values that makes his art unique. This dynamic is what, to a large degree, instills often in his work that sense of the profound - and just as often, the sense of the confounding.

The story and structure of One Is Business is very simple. Two couples are introduced at the beginning - one rich, one poor. This "mirror image" device quickly allows Griffith to jump cut for comparison and contrast. The plot outline and script by George Hennessey (who also is credited for The Miser’s Heart and The Sunbeam), is custom-made for Griffith to ply his craft.

The poor couple (Charles West and Dorothy Bernard) are shown in their impoverished home, suffering in poverty, as the husband attempts, unsuccessfully, over and over, to find a job. The rich couple on the other hand (Edwin August and the irrepressible Blanche Sweet) have an opulent home and a comfortable, happy life.

The major conflict for each couple reaches its individual pitch, which forces both sides to intersect and to become the major revelation of the film. In the rich husband’s case, it is his willingness to accept a $1000 bribe in return for a favorable vote for a railroad company. In the poor husband’s side, it is the desperation that finally drives him into breaking into a wealthy home to steal for food.

Of course, it is into the Rich Couple’s house that he stumbles, whereupon he is overtaken by the rich wife, who catches him, holding a gun on him. Desperately, he pleads for mercy, protesting that he has never done such a thing before in his life. When he reveals what he has uncovered in his attempted theft - the rich husband’s letter of bribe and the attached money - the rich wife is dumbstruck.

On arriving at the scene, the rich husband is all for packing the intruder off to jail. His wife, however, shows him what the would-be thief had stumbled upon. She thrusts the moral equivalency right into her husband’s face. "So yours is business, his is a crime." Brought face to face with the truth of his own moral complicity, he relents and tells the poor husband he can leave - the police will not be called.

There is not a great deal of action in One Is Business, the Other Theft - we are shown all we need to see, precisely and economically devised. Once the situations are presented to us, we mainly observe the actors thinking, which is a challenging job both for director and cast. Here, without words for expression, and with very little action occurring, is where we find the heart of the drama of the film. It is the thoughtful ruminations of the implications of individual’s situations and actions that are the most powerful actions of the film, and this is tremendously difficult to depict. The subtleties in the acting, however, and the concomitant patience of the director to allow time to pass while we observe people in painful reflection pays off in the end - here, Griffith has demonstrated an uncanny skill in presenting psychological drama in a very sophisticated, non-showy form.

This is truly a mark of bravery and self trust on the part of the film-maker, and it once again underscores his confidence at the handling of his medium. As we, in the audience, watch the characters think, we think along with them, feeling their passion and inner turmoil - and we are relieved to see whenever a mental crisis is overcome.

As mentioned before, a chief virtue of this film is in its simplicity. The acting is top rate and understated all around. And there are some very striking images that subtly push the themes forward with a quiet energy. The shot of the large city buildings in the background whenever the poor husband moves slowly up the hill to his little home are a daunting reminder of the difficulties of the erosion of humanity in the modern world.

Griffith’s subtle intercutting of the two couples and their relative worlds are the heart of the film’s structure, and of course are at the core of his technique. We move from sadness to happiness, from poverty to opulence, with ease. These are not harsh jump cuts in the manner of A Corner in Wheat or The Userer - these are softer, and in a sense, more masterful. The jump cuts come slowly, easily, and allow the dual stories to be told, while at the same time building to the development of the main theme of the film.

There is a tremendous grace and ease in which all the players take their roles, and this can only be attributed to Griffith’s firm and understanding hand at exactly what is required from a film performer to capture a desired effect.

It is quite moving, for example, to watch the uncomfortable look on the rich husband’s face while he his masking his duplicitous secret from his wife’s fond mannerisms towards him. This kind of acting, which is based upon knowledge withheld from a character, but which the audience possesses, will imbue many a scene in the future of cinema with extraordinary power.

Likewise, when he is further ruminating on what he should do while his wife suffers with the disappointment of his shame in solitary jump cuts, we feel the power of the human mind, linked inseparably with the human conscience, which is revealed to be a bond between individuals.
Likewise, a cut back to the poor husband returning home, ashamed to face his wife after the bungled burglary, reveals the same sort of tormented ambivalence in which we all are caught up in life’s ongoing drama.

There is great joy and relief when the rich wife discovers her husband’s decision to return the bribe - a joy that is shared, and likewise is shared with the audience.

In the denouement, the following morning, the rich husband visits the poor husband and offers him a job. This dramatically completes the cycle, but of course for us, this is much too forced. (How did he know where this guy lived, anyway?) This emotionally satisfying, yet absurd ending seems to feel just right, however. And if that is so, that is due entirely to the successful handling of the narrative up to this point. Griffith just keeps things going to their (logical?) happy conclusion, and the fact that we can forgive his slip of naivete and go along with it is both an aesthetic triumph and a moral/aesthetic mistake.

This is inherent in the power of cinema - we can be manipulated into thinking or believing anything the artist wishes, be he artist enough. Therein lies the great danger of film, a danger that Griffith will force us to face in his greatest masterwork - a danger that we are still debating today.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Sunbeam

The Sunbeam (1912) - This little melodrama has nice acting, and a few nice touches of humor, but one can’t seem to get over the maudlin effect of tiny Ynez Seabury, "Little Kathy" of The Miser’s Heart, witnessing her mother’s death, unaware as she is of what has occurred.

Griffith’s trick here is to take two individuals - in this case, an unnamed Bachelor and a Spinster who live across the hall from each other, and tie them together through a third - the "Sunbeam." The devices of editing are quite simple here and provide no difficulty either for the audience or the scenarist. Griffith’s intent is less technical than emotional here, as the division of characters and jump cuts in plot are much simpler than, say, The Miser’s Heart.

The aforementioned death scene is the very first one in the film, and the innocent reaction of the child to her mother’s pitiful demise, is to misunderstand, and place a finger to her lips, thinking she is only sleeping. The effect is truly heartbreaking, and no doubt Griffith meant for it to be. But the death serves the purpose of the scenario (credited to George Hennessey, who also wrote The Miser’s Heart), for the intent is to create a family from isolated, lonely people.

I suppose that the film makers justified the on-screen death by making us concerned for the child’s future welfare, thus giving us the requisite happy ending, but I, for one, do not feel satisfied. The opening scene is simply too cruel for the levity that follows, and the Sumbeam’s Mamma’s death hangs over the entire film like a shroud.

But to get on with the simple story, we first cut to a downstairs apartment in the same building, occupied by the prissy, uptight Spinster, played effectively by Claire McDowell, the blank-eyed haunted widow of His Trust. We cut to the hall, to see the entrance of the Bachelor (Dell Henderson, interestingly McDowell’s husband, Colonel Frazier from the same film, here sans moustache and swagger). He observes two pairs of charming couples in the hall, presumably with sad envy, before entering his small, lonely room. A title card tells us too much: "EVERYBODY HAS FRIENDS BUT HIM."

A cut back to the spinster’s room shows her exiting, then a following shot of both of them in the hallway reveals that they live directly across from each other. This is a nice economy of action, even if it is all too simple, and of course we know precisely what is going to happen. (Did Griffith’s audience anticipate the outcome? An interesting question.)

The two loners speak briefly in the hall, and the Spinster returns to her room, with her only companion, a sewing machine. McDowell plays the Spinster-ness of her character to the hilt. Her fastidious, jerking motions embody the way she is made up, in her stiff, too-high collar, her tightly wrapped hair, and of course her spectacles. This is already a stereotype character, but she fleshes it out well. On the other side, Henderson defines his character with slightly sorrowful looks and offhand gestures, his lonely boy persona punctuated by a big sweeping curl that swoops boyishly down to the middle of his forehead.

Back to the dead woman and the little girl, the child asking "Mama? Mama?" to the corpse is once again just too much, particularly as heavenly beautiful as the innocent angel is.

The empathy curve is too much for the next cut, which shows three older children gallomping down the stairs to play a practical joke. We can’t get the heartache out of our system quickly enough to enjoy their pranks, which will begin the next round of action in the film. The kids playfully tie the door of the Spinster and the Bachelor together, so that neither can open the door without the other one.

Of course, they both try simultaneously, and when the rope inevitably breaks, sending the frustrated pair hurtling back into their respective apartments, this sends them both into indignant confrontation with one another. These scenes are actually quite funny taken on their own, but the pallor of death lies too heavily for the audience to fully enjoy them, and some of the subtleties of the characters’ reactions get lost.

We return to the little girl who takes entirely too long to leave, staring forlornly at her dead mother, taking off her little apron and picking up her dolly. Finally the title card displays her inner mind: "BETTER GO OUT AND NOT WAKE MAMMA." Oh, could you possibly make us more miserable and depressed, Mr. Griffith?

Finally exiting the death chamber, the little girl descends the stairs and is rebuffed by both an adult and a child alike. The Spinster returns down the stairs and attempts to shoo the little waif away from her door as if it were a pesky cat. Entering her room again, this time followed by the lonely tyke, she becomes hilariously exasperated. She does not quite know what to do with this little intruder, so she begins trying to chase her off with a feather duster, which only delights the child, thinking it is a game, and running circles about the room. Finally, they stop, and when the little ray of "Sunshine" plants a tiny kiss on her own hand, then places it on the Spinster’s, the woman becomes completely undone with the unexpected expression of love, stunned to the point of immobility, even dropping the duster, which is a lovely touch.

Maternal feelings having been awoken - actually just "human feelings" - the Spinster struggles to react properly. Her awkward, halting gestures as she attempts to pick up the little girl and hold her in her lap demonstrate wonderfully the vulnerability beneath her wall of enclosure. Even her glasses are gone now, as she cradles the smiling girl in her arms, first staring, completely puzzled, before her face gives over to the self-shocking onset of overwhelming emotion. It is truly beautifully acted.

Once again, these subtleties come so quickly that perhaps Griffith is piling on more than his audience can absorb. These notes are written with hindsight and the benefit of a remote control with stop and rewind features to which the original audience had no access, and I am convinced that a lot of this gets lost, especially in the overwhelming presence of the dead mama upstairs.
Suddenly, policemen appear in the hallway, and after their exit, our three little scamps enter to play another joke. They are in possession of an official-looking ‘SCARLET FEVER" sign, display it to themselves for the camera, then run off laughing down the hall.

Meanwhile, the little girl exits the Spinster’s room, crosses the hall, and repeats the same gambit with the arriving Bachelor, who impatiently shoos her away before disappearing into his own room. Once inside, she quickly melts his heart as well. Inevitably, the Spinster joins them (in search of a hair puff). Once they are all inside, the mischievous children in the hall tack the "SCARLET FEVER" sign on the closed door, and summon a policeman. Forced to accommodate the little room by the authorities, this nascent family begins their thaw, as it dawns on them how lovely family life would be, and both adults drop their protective guards.

A higher-ranking police officer is summoned, and the children’s trick is discovered. Free to leave the room now, they both return to the little girl’s room, where they find the mother has expired. Realizing the only way to save all their problems, the Bachelor proposes marriage and adoption, to which the Spinster readily agrees.

As the final shot fades, the new family of three huddles happily on the floor on the right side of the frame, while the dead mother’s body stretches across the left side. I suppose this is a "happy" ending. Perhaps, in Griffith’s day, death (especially among the tenements) was so common a sight that this resolution really was a relief to the audience, and the residual horror that we feel today would not have been nearly as pronounced.

In all, The Sunbeam features many wonderful elements: Griffith’s sentimentalism is moderated by both stark realism, as well as the elements of comedy. A central theme is emerging of the individual breaking down barriers constructed by modern life to reach humanistic values. If this formula seems a bit too simplistic and contrived today, one must keep in mind the progressive nature of Griffith’s vision in 1912. Here, no one calls on the re-establishment of a just social order - the answers to the modern world’s dilemmas are found rooted in the human heart. That Griffith’s vision straddles two worlds: the old Victorian and the new modern landscape of alienation, he can obviously be criticized for an inadequate response to the latter by use of the values of the former. It would be a mistake, however, I believe, to criticize this great early modernist too severely for his naivite’, simply because he was a humanist.

No, Griffith was not the intellect, nor did he have the capacity to grasp the dark ironies of life that someone like, say, Jean Renoir would, some twenty years later. But that takes nothing away from this ground-root establishment of the art of cinema as a place where modernity collides with humanism. In essence, this may be as good a definition of the art and history of cinema itself as any, and in constructing such films as The Sunbeam, it can be argued that D.W. Griffith was laying the very foundation for the movies’ subsequent moral and aesthetic dialectics, every bit as much as it was its technical vocabulary.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

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.

Monday, October 29, 2007

The Last Drop of Water

The Last Drop of Water (1911) - Griffith has already given us the spectacle of war. Here he turns his skill in directing large-scale action sequences to the scene of an Indian attack on settlers passing through the desert, contributing, no doubt importantly, to that most powerful of early American film genres, the western.

Ever since The Great Train Robbery (1903), the American Western, already the focus of the country’s great mythic sense of self-identity, and continuing over the next half-century and beyond, the screen would vividly display expression of the dreams, dangers and rugged individuals that gave so much of the nation its birth and its identity. The western would prove to be probably the most important genre in American cinema over its first half century of commercial production, produced by such masters as John Ford, Howard Hawkes, Anthony Mann, and Sam Peckinpah - as well as countless legions of lesser talents and outright hacks.

D.W. Griffith made a number of westerns, and his contributions to the development of the genre should not be understated. Like everything that Griffith touched, he took the raw materials, expanded upon them, and created a larger template from which later artists would draw from to derive their own visions.

The Last Drop of Water is based on a short story by the famed western writer Bret Harte (1836-1902) and was scripted by Stanner E.V. Taylor (the author of Griffith’s first film, The Adventures of Dollie), who already had several western scenarios to his credit. The chief contribution of Griffith appears to be his well-developed skill at giving order to large, complex scenes of movement and violence, as well as his seemingly now-perfected ability to produce intelligible, meaningful, counterpoint-laden rhythm between a large-scale action and a smaller, human story within which it is contained.

One looking at The Last Drop of Water today might be well tempted to think of it as a simple and contrived story, but in reality, the subtlety of Griffith’s visual narrative is extraordinarily sophisticated for 1911. As a matter of fact, it is this sophistication, the model of which so many subsequent decades of film are patterned after, that ironically makes it look quite simple. We are too familiar with his methods to notice the masterful artistry of his creation.

The story begins with two competitive suitors for the affections one lovely Mary (Blanche Sweet - later to play the lead role in Griffith’s pre-Birth mini-epic Judith of Bethulia (1914). John (Joseph Greybill), a decent, normal sort of fellow, is rejected in favor of the more swaggering (and hard-drinking) Jim. There’s no hard feelings however, as John joins with the newly married couple on a wagon train across the Western Desert. Griffith skillfully handles the complicated maneuvers of myriads of people and wagons in bustling activities, both in the background, and in the main shots, deftly switching between them to integrate our main characters with the general action.

In several shots, indeed, Griffith cuts from a medium close up of Jim and Mary sitting in their seat at their wagon to a wider shot, showing them in the larger context of the wagon train as a whole. This is the first time I have seen him make this kind of cut - actually the first time I have seen it at all - and wherever its source, it becomes an important new tool to help tell a story.

The group joins up with another wagon train to re-enforce one another in case of Indian attacks. During the larger intermingling, we get a closer look at Jim’s somewhat unsavory character. One of the newcomers, craving a drink, attempts to pull the ever-present whisky bottle from his hand, and Jim hauls off and gives a good punch to the side his head. Mary quickly moves into the frame, attempting to calm him down, and Jim, angered, is just prevented from striking Mary as well by the quickly restraining hand of John, emerging just from behind him. (One senses that John is concerned for Mary’s safety from Jim, and is always hovering just nearby.)

Jim regains his composure, and Mary begins to cry. Jim is at a loss as to how to console her. Griffith cuts back to John, who has moved back to his horse, looking back and shaking his head. There is no question that Griffith wants us to believe that Mary has made the wrong choice between these two men.

There are several shots of the long, carefully controlled wagon train moving along the dusty desert trail. Suddenly, as the head of the train is shown entering the background of a shot, we see two Indians enter and spot them, before rushing across the trail unseen. The shot is a tad clumsy, as the Indians, though distant and quick, would still be in full view of the train. But the basic effect is achieved, as we are tipped off to their presence - and the impending danger - before the pioneers are.

One cannot help but thinking of Alfred Hitchcock here. For though Hitchcock made no westerns, he did make an entire career out of films based upon increasingly baroque variations of this type of shot - allowing the audience to see something threatening before the protagonists could see it, thus creating a sense of suspense and anxiety.

Suddenly, the Indians are charging in full attack, and we cut between them and the wagon train, moving steadily, attempting to flee to safety. We see two wagons caught by the marauders, circling about them in a swirl of rising dust, and the danger is realized, at least for this end of the group. A title card is shown announcing, "A STOCKADE IS MADE OF THE WAGONS," but we do not get to see the wagon train’s circle forming. Instead, we see a couple of wagons pulling up side by side, a cut back to the horde of invaders on horseback, then a cut back to the pioneers already enclosed in the protective circle.

One one hand, it is a bit of a disappointment not to get to witness what one would imagine would be a complex, but vividly exciting maneuver. But on reflection, it is certain that this kind of large choreography would be very difficult and time consuming. Griffith’s sense of economy and confidence in his audience’s ability to follow the narrative allows him to establish the situation quickly and efficiently. We are then free to keep following the human drama.

A title announces, "WATER GONE - VOLUNTEERS ASKED TO GET MORE." We cut to Jim in the foreground of a complex, multi-layered shot, with much activity. Directly behind him, a couple of rows of girls sit, exhausted, afraid and praying amidst heaps of provisions now sitting in the dirt. In the far left background, we see men directing some hurried action. Away in the deep background, a wagon stretches behind him, with another angling back toward the mid-foreground, with other people involved in similar, but separate activities. With just this little area’s composition, then, Griffith has created the illusion of one portion - a microcosm - of what must be a large wagon train-circle community - which is the unseen macrocosm. We remember how many wagons we have seen and we imaginatively construct the size of the circle for ourselves.

The main action in the foreground, however, has to do with Jim. He is being implored by a man just off-screen to go for water. He swills down the last of his whisky bottle, then kisses it good-bye before taking on three large empty canteens.from the man who has moved into the frame. Mary suddenly appears at the left, on his side, worried, seemingly imploring him not to go. Jim shrugs off the danger, however, takes a deep breath, then rushes out on his mission.

We cut to Jim creeping carefully between the wheels of a wagon, then rushing out into enemy territory. He creeps along the ground by a cactus, stealthily. Then we are shown the Indians again, riding, shooting and hollering, and we are reminded of the danger to which he is exposing himself.

Mary waits anxiously for him near the rows of girls, as we see lines of men shooting behind her from behind a wagon. Returning to the desert, we see the heat and fatigue are taking their toll on Jim, who swoons. Suddenly, we cut to a shot of John hiding amongst the cactus, watching him. He has apparently followed him, to assist - or perhaps he had already gone alone. This is a problem in the film, and something that Griffith does not make clear. Perhaps there is a slice of film missing that would explain the situation more fully. If not, Griffith has gotten a little sloppy in his storytelling, and is running the risk of confusing the audience.

We return to Jim, who falls to the ground. Just as he is about to take up the last bit of water remaining in one of the canteens, John charges into the scene, exhausted, collapsing on Jim’s lap. John is dying of thirst, and quickly falls unconscious. Jim hesitates for a few moments, undecided, and then, after unfortunately over-emoting for a second or two, softly pours the last of the water into John’s opened mouth. Jim realizes that this means his own death, but he rises, attempting to continue on his way.

A cut back to John, however, shows that the drink has revived him, and he stumbles to his feet, grabbing the canteens with him. Somehow he makes it to a creek bed, where he soaks in the refreshment and fills the canteens. A cut back to Jim shows him collapsing in the dust. John, armed with the saving liquid, quickly returns to the wagon train, and immediately brings a canteen to the now-seated Mary, pouring for her a large, saving draught into her mouth.
A title card announces, "THE ATONEMENT." We see a group of cavalry soldiers being told of the pioneers’ plight. We then cut back to John, explaining to Mary that Jim did not make it back. She faints, and he catches her. We cut back to the Cavalry, who are now mounted and ready to ride, which they do, in a long line. Back inside the wagon train circle, the fight is continuing fiercely. The long train of cavalry men arrive, however, chasing the rampaging Indians away. They then return to the wagons, where the pioneers greet them wildly.

Combing the ground, John comes across Jim’s dead body.Mary joins him, and falls to embrace her fallen husband. A cut shows one of the pioneers persuading Mary to come along. She acquiesces and makes her way back to her wagon, John trailing along a bit behind. He stands with his back to us, and watches her mount the rear of a wagon. It begins moving, and he follows on foot. The scene fades to dark, and we have reached the end.

Here, in some of the final scenes, the film is awkward at points, and it is somewhat difficult to discern the text, much more to make out the sub-text. It seems that Griffith falters a bit in his narrative. Too many things remain unclear. For example, did John have to rush back to the camp, not knowing where Jim was - or did he just leave him to die? The search for the body suggests the former. Though John returns to Mary to save her with the water, I don’t believe that he is attempting to take Jim’s place - it is only his love and concern for her which drives him on.

The very ending is difficult, too. The cut from Mary and John at Jim’s body to Mary standing with an unidentified man is too quick and confusing to grasp at first viewing. Furthermore, as the wagon train leaves, John is shot continually from behind, only identifiable by his clothes, hat and demeanor. It would be very easy for an audience to miss his presence altogether.

Once one realizes that the figure is John, and that he is moving on alone, there is a great deal of pathos in the scene of resignation - but this can only work if the audience knows that this is, indeed, John, and that Mary is paying him no heed in her grief for Jim. It seems that it would have only taken one more shot to establish John’s identity more clearly, and then the final scene would have a much fuller impact - not to mention running the risk of the audience losing the narrative thread altogether.

Once again, perhaps The Last Drop of Water was made a little too quickly. But overall, Griffith manages to effectively tell a small story within the context of a larger, historical one. This is becoming his greatest strength as a director, and it is this that will inform his great epic films to come.

Another welcome addition to The Last Drop of Water is ambiguity of character. While the first half of the film establishes Jim as a drunken hot-head, prejudicing the audience against him, and sympathetically shows John’s loneliness and concern for Mary, we instinctively reject the first and identify with the latter. When Jim actually proves the hero, however, not only bravely risking his life for the group, but actually surrendering his life to save John, we realize that our estimation of both of these characters have been much too shallow.

I would like the think that Griffith is using the final scene as an ironic device warning his viewers not to be tricked by the conventions of cinema into thinking they know too much too well about people. Or rather, he is using the narrative devices of cinema to remind us about the old injunction about "judging books by their covers." If indeed, Griffith is actually intending the reading that I am giving the film, The Last Drop of Water is a very sophisticated, if somewhat flawed, use of film language to capture the ironies of life through the inherent methods of cinematic art. It would help press his claim immensely to being, or becoming, a truly great artist.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Enoch Arden

Enoch Arden (1911) - As if to prove Griffith’s point about the public’s appetite for feature-length films, when Biograph released this two-reeler in two separate parts for viewing on successive days, public demand eventually forced them to slice the two together to make one 33-minute film. Griffith was correct that audiences had developed the attention span to focus on a story for an extended length of time, and they were frustrated when Enoch Arden, Part 1 ended without a resolution.

As for the film itself, I do not believe that it is as notable as some of the other Griffith films of the period. Supposedly based on Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem of the same title, Enoch Arden is basically a remake 1910’s The Unchanging Sea, with a love triangle thrown in for good measure, with an ending of pathos rather than joy.

Emotionally, this little melodrama must have worked to the audience’s favor, but there is little or no advance in cinematic technique at work here.

Two things can be said in Enoch Arden’s favor. The additional length of the film allows Griffith time to develop character and to draw the audience in. He can tell his story unhurriedly (though rarely has he rushed anything before), and thus increase emotional involvement. The other nice aspect of the film is the acting, which is very nicely done by the performers, with notable understatement and humanity.

The basic story is very simple. Enoch Arden (played by William Lucas, the black-faced George of His Trust) and Philip Ray (the nobly sad-faced Francis J. Granon - who would later become a director himself) compete for the affections of Annie Lee (Linda Avidson (Griffith), repeating essentially her same performance in The Unchanging Sea). Annie picks Enoch, they marry and have children, while Philip Ray broods silently alone.

Enoch undertakes an overseas adventure, and when he does not return, landing on a deserted island, Annie mourns and patiently waits for his return. As the years pass, Phillip Ray gently advances his desires, pressing Annie to think of her children. She demurs, and Philip Ray dejectedly accepts her decision.

Meanwhile, Enoch has grown into a kind of wild man of Borneo - his savage beard presages the contemporary vision of Tom Hanks in Castaway, but he is given considerably less to do. His chief vocation seems to be standing around on the island between coconut trees, getting older and harrier.

By the time Annie’s children are grown, they entreat upon her mother to remarry, which she finally relents and does, to the overwhelming joy of the patient Philip Ray. Of course, at the same time, Enoch is finally rescued and brought home.

It is the climactic scene that is played delicately, and with such care that lends the film its true charm and emotional aspect. Enoch cautiously approaches his home, and peers in the window. There he sees his aging wife along with his grown children, happily grouped as a family with the kind Philip Ray. Not wishing to disrupt their harmony, Enoch simply accepts his fate and silently, sadly, simply turns away.

There are some lovely moments in the film. As in The Unchaning Sea, Griffith gets wonderful, expressive shots of his actors with the crashing waves as a background. A good-sized wooden frigate has been acquired from some source, lending the movie a somewhat epic feel, especially when Enoch boards it from a rowboat. There is the tumultuous poetry of the survivors of the shipwreck struggling in ferocious waters, and even better, a shot taken from off the shore (probably on a dock), where we watch the staggering men fighting their exhausting way through the surf to dry land. Jump cuts abound throughout, as we contrast Enoch’s island mishap with Annie forlornly waiting and aging back home, searching the sea through her pocket telescope.

However, it is not any technical bravura that wins for Enoch Arden any of its emotional appeal. Rather, it is in the understated style of the acting, the naturalness with which the characters are imbued, that sustains its interest and concern for the audience. Griffith not only directs the actors well, but he gives them plenty of space in which to emote, breathe and become real people. The slow, rhythmical cadence of the film gives it a warmth that can hold the attention of a viewer for two entire reels. And it is through these devices, which do not seem devised, that allow people to be caught up in the tragic pathos of the story and its ending.

Griffith is showing a different kind of mastery here - a delicate touch that displays a artist’s growing confidence to let his material work for itself. In all, Enoch Arden is a much more fully realized vision than The Unchanging Sea. Here we are witnessing the gradual maturation of the invisibly poetic realism that would come to dominate the film style of American movies, practically up until Citizen Kane.

Monday, October 8, 2007

His Trust

His Trust (1911) - Here’s a marvelous early chance to observe D.W. Griffith’s take on the Civil War, and thus an opportunity to examine and discuss his Southern racism in particular, before we get to The Birth of a Nation (1915).

Now, it is obvious that the racism of His Trust - which is subtitled, "The Faithful Devotion and Self-Sacrifice on An Old Negro Servant" - is purely of a sentimentalists’ nature. It might be even more appropriate to call its point of view "anachronistic" or even "old-fashioned," rather than "racist," in the modern sense of the term. One of the great lessons of viewing The Birth of a Nation, however, with all of its horrific, incendiary challenges, is that racism is never "too small" not to take very seriously. Lord knows where it can lead, and as history has shown all to well, lead it does.

That said, the attitudes and images of His Trust on their own would probably lead most people more to a sense of embarrassment than of outrage. It is clear that Griffith’s post-war Southern perspective is tainted, as is his narrative, by a kind of culturally determined sentimentalism, and is due once again to the director’s naivety - he in no way wishes to demean his subject, although that is precisely what he does. Rather, he is attempting to offer him up as a heroic figure. Griffith’s pathetic tunnel vision does not allow him to see the ironies of his viewpoint, and his cultural myopia does not permit an alternative point of view. (Was there no one to point these things out to him? - or was this attitude of such common coin in its day that it would trouble no one, perhaps excepting African Americans themselves, who would have had little voice in this day?)

The story is very simple. A Confederate officer answers the call to war, and entrusts his old servant, George (Wilfred Lucas, a white actor in blackface) to protect his wife and daughter while he is gone. The officer dies in battle, and when a rampaging pack of Yankees descend on the helpless Southern mansion, looting and burning it, it is faithful George who saves the little girl from the flames, and then generously moves both mother and daughter to his little cabin, while he sleeps faithfully outdoors.

Two things are worth noting here, before proceeding to a discussion. First, His Trust is the first half of a two-reel feature, which Biograph divided into two different shorts which could be either viewed consecutively or could stand alone - expressly against Griffith’s wishes and artistic consent. So it is even here, in 1911, that we have a serious conflict between director and studio - artist vs. capitalist - regarding a film, which will repeat over and over down to the present day. The second half, entitled His Trust Fulfilled, is (curiously) not included on this disc, so we cannot view the entirety of Griffith’s vision as he intended.

Secondly, His Trust was the fourth of Griffith’s seven shorts about the Civil War which he directed before The Birth of a Nation. The complete collection of those appear in the Kino 2-disc set of The Birth of a Nation which comes in the Griffith Masterworks collection that includes this set. And it does include His Trust Fulfilled. I trust that it will be a most instructive addendum to studying and analyzing that film, and we will defer discussion of these to that time.

So what can we say about His Trust at this point? Clearly, it’s not politically correct, but that is certainly no sin in itself, especially given its release date. Griffith wished to demean no one, and seen from his point of view, the film is exactly as he intended it. It is a moral tale of the dignity of the individual who maintains his sacred office or position - in essence, his "trust."

"Trust" is a key word for Griffith. The greatest sins of Griffith’s characters are those who selfishly pursue a personally desired pathway, rather than fulfilling their requirements in a commitment that they have taken upon themselves. This is a very important point, and it should not be trivialized. Yes, our hero, "George," is a slave here, and Griffith conveniently forgets about that. The point is that the Officer has "asked" - not ordered - George to protect his family in his absence. George agrees, and he takes his compact, his "trust," very, very seriously. In Griffith’s world, this is the highest good that an individual can undertake.

The film opens with the Col. Frazier (Dell Henderson) taking leave of his wife (Clare McDowell, the suffering mother of The Usurer) and little daughter. The black servants are gathered in the background, all hideously obvious as black-faced white actors. The Colonel slaps George on the back, then shakes his old hand with seemingly great respect as well as affection before encharging him with his sacred "trust."

A cut to the front of the house shows the excited white ladies and girls waving and all the "darkies" dancing as the proud Confederate army marches proudly down the street. The Colonel follows in their train, his wife looking proudly after, and old white-haired George a-clappin’ his hands. One has to admit the ridiculous antics of the slaves in the background is demeaning, whatever one’s point of view. But in Griffith’s world, these people were a kind of gentle group of children, loving their masters, not ready in any sense for emancipation, and wholly supportive of the troops that would fight to keep them enslaved.

That this view was inherited directly from his elders, and particularly his father, a Civil War veteran, once again we can only point to Griffith’s naivety for the absence of a more progressive view. For as we see, over and over, Griffith is the inheritor of a tradition - not just Southern - that upholds righteous humanistic values, however skewered those values may be seen from our perspective.

What one has to grasp here is a concept that is tremendously difficult to have sympathy with today. For Griffith, and his father and grandfather’s generation, the black man was happy to be enslaved, for as an inferior, less-sophisticated race, they fared well economically - that is, were taken care of by their white masters, and lived in an important auxiliary relationship with them that was respectable and respected.

No doubt this myth did indeed permeate not only the white, but many of the blacks of the antebellum period. Especially in an agrarian society, conservatism and tradition is the rule. That Griffith’s portraiture of black slavery should so blatantly gloss over its inherent inhumanity and its savage, violent nature only demonstrates further his lack of intellectual insight. I’m certain that Griffith would be the first to admit that many blacks suffered under slavery, but I’m equally certain that he would put all that down to the evil character of individual slave owners and traders themselves. He would not criticize the institution as inherently evil, since for him, it seemed a natural, harmonic state of social organization.

We will have many opportunities to return to this vexing perspective, but let us return to the film’s narrative.

Griffith cuts from the Colonel’s wife and daughter waiting, anxiously at home, to the Colonel’s fight in a battle, which is marvelously filmed. War is chaotic by definition, and it is a supreme challenge to film it in such a way that maintains coherence (let alone aesthetic balance) while still maintaining verisimilitude. Griffith achieves this here masterfully.

In the first place, to establish the situation, he simplifies the perspective and places the viewer in the center of the action by simple use of two horizontal lines of soldiers at different levels, giving a clear indication of who is who and where, as well as giving us a correct sense of distance. Furthermore, we are placed at the point of view of the Confederate army, just behind the front line, which inaugurates us into the action and forcing upon us the rebel’s perspective, so that we will automatically identify ourselves with it.

A cut to the left of the same Confederate line, now shown as a diagonal, centers our focus on our Colonel, and keeps us firmly in place within the battle scenario.

Griffith then uses his famous jump-cut technique to place us back at the Colonel’s home, where his family, along with old George, are occupied, oblivious to his peril. This keeps us psychologically tied to both ends of the story - not only are we reminded of the family at home, but the contrasting cuts keep the relationship of the two narratives firmly established in our minds.

The little girl is sad for her absent daddy, so "Uncle George" helps to cheer the child by getting down on all fours and letting her ride "horsey" on his back, much to her delight, as well as the other slaves in the background.

Again, how do we respond to such an image as this? We cannot help but recognize that the old man is visually degraded by such foolery, given his enforced social status. But at the same time, what would motivate any adult to play in such a manner with a child except the honest motivation of love? I think that we cannot help but admire George, not as a servant (certainly not as a slave), but as a person. George is a caring human being who wants to keep others happy. If this were a white uncle, we would have no problem accepting it. It is the fact that as an elderly black slave, George seems to us a pathetic image, down on his knees to entertain his master’s family. It is a contradiction that disturbs us, but it does not disturb D.W. Griffith.

Actually, from Griffith’s perspective, the fact that George is a slave enhances his humanity and natural goodness. He does not have to care about these people, whose interests might be seen as inimical to his own. But he does.

Obviously, as Malcolm X would have quickly pointed out, there is a dysfunctional psychology at work here in which the servant "identifies" with his white master, since he shares the duties and responsibilities of the house and has exceptional access to the family. He is clearly in a higher position than the rest of the slaves on the plantation, and therefore will enact his subservient role more readily. From the twisted racist perspective of a D.W. Griffith (or virtually any other Southerner of the period), George is simply being "a good Negro."

Griffith then cuts back to the battle, where the Colonel is frantically shouting orders from behind his line of firing men. In the same diagonally constructed shot as before, he exhorts his troops. He next cuts to the similarly aligned Union line, depicted from the front, horizontally, at mid-screen, so that we can clearly mark the distinction between the two, plus giving us the advantage to see more closely, while maintaining our subjective perspective from the Confederate side. The film is never going to go behind the Union line, and we, as viewers, remain on the side of the South throughout the film - there is no ambiguity here. As we shall see in The Birth of a Nation, this is not a propaganda device to force us to identify with one side, politically. It is, rather, an aesthetic device designed to keep our focus on the participants in the drama, and to identify with them.

Horses ride above the center, horizontal line of fire, moving to the left, behind them. A cannon is drawn. The troops continue firing. The cannon is moved into position for firing.

Griffith cuts back to the Colonel behind the rebel line. He urges his men on, and many of them rise. A cut to the right side of this line, as established once again by the horizontal trick of perspective, sees the cannon’s discharge land in "no-man’s land" directly in front of the soldiers, after which the Colonel, seen now from behind, orders the charge.

The cannon’s explosion makes the sense of danger all the more palpable, and as the rush of men climb over the barricades to race toward their firing enemy, Griffith economically and graphically captures the danger and bravery of combat. As the Colonel scales the little hill, leading his men out into the field beyond, we cannot see the Union army - but we can see the smoke from their guns. The shot is immediately suffused in smoke, and we watch as dying soldiers drop in front of us. The perspective is perfect for placing the spectator directly in the scene of battle, and thousands of Americans, never having seen or experienced it as yet, would be able to observe precisely how it looked to be in the middle of a war.

This is a remarkable achievement, indeed. Griffith is using all his weaponry in the language of film to place the individual in a very unique, exotic context. In fact, this will be one of the medium of cinema’s great triumphs overall - no other method yet devised by man could adequately arrest the senses and place the perspectives of war so personally. This is something that is unique to cinema, and cannot be accomplished through other visual arts or narrative.
While it is true that Homer, for example, thrusts one’s mind and heart in the center of deadly combat in its own uniquely mimetic way, the content is primarily psychological. As we read the lines of the Illiad, we know intimately what Achilles, Ajax and Hector perceive and feel. In the miracle of the verse, we are at one with them.

With cinema, on the other hand, we cannot tell what these soldiers feel - but we are visually thrust into their places, and our own emotional responses fill in the blanks for us. Though still mimetic, we experience the process of war, to which we now identify, and provide our own sense of fear, horror, excitement, bravery, etc. It is here that cinema shows its inherent democratic nature, as each individual builds his own character in response to the images witnessed by him.

But it must be remembered, that by the same token, cinema is just as equally dictatorial. For as the director chooses the shots and makes the edits, he forces us into a world that is completely pre-determined by him or her. This is cinema’s great balance - the thrusting of the individual into the content of another’s choosing, thus limiting, and to a large degree, determining his responses, while at the same time allowing for the individual imagination and character of the viewer to supply his own interpretation and commentary on the action. Thus, as all true art, cinema is a co-operative endeavour that requires participation on the part of the viewer to give it its full meaning - or rather range of meanings - which is never completely exhausted by any one perspective.

A cut brings us back to the Union line as before, although now, it is further connected to the previous shot (and action) by the pervasiveness of the smoke. As the smoke clears, the Colonel moves into position in the center of the screen. Unfortunately, though he is moving, more or less, in the correct diagonal angle toward the army firing in the background, the angle of his body is is tipped somewhat too much toward the camera, so that we may identify him clearly. This is clearly an error on Griffith’s part, but the communicative and emotional content of the scene is clear and carries the day, as we witness the Colonel clearly being mortally shot during the charge. This is certainly a dramatic climax of the narrative, and Griffith is being perhaps too extremely careful that we make no mistake about what has happened.

The next shot takes us back behind the Confederate line again, and we see Union army infantry approaching. Another rebel officer waves his sword and calls for a charge. The men go scurrying over the embankment and rush headlong into the advancing troops, routing them back. One Confederate soldier is shot just as he breaches the crest and falls back, arms outstretched, dead, in the left foreground.

(I have to say that this sequence is a bit confusing here, as the previous shots had suggested that all the Confederates had already left on the charge. Add that to the fact that the officer with the sword looks very much like our already-dead Colonel, and one begins to wonder if Griffith - or someone - been a little bit negligent in the editing here.)

We cut back immediately to the Union line, which is still holding and firing ferociously. The Confederate army charges into the screen from the left, and completely overruns them. We quickly see that there is victory, and the celebrating soldiers wave their caps in triumph.

Griffith jump cuts back to the family home, where the Colonel’s wife (McDowell) sits with her little girl sleeping in her lap. George approaches to see if he can offer assistance. The wife shakes her head no. George retreats, and a black-faced female servant takes the child from her lap and off to bed. McDowell stands and faces out anxiously.

We jump back to the battlefield scene to see the Colonel issuing his dying words to the other officer with the sword that we just saw in the previous shot (played by Mack Sennett). The Colonel issues his dying request, hands Sennett his sword, and then falls back dead. Sennett takes the sword and departs.

We jump cut to the exterior of the Colonel’s house, where Sennett arrives with the Colonel’s sword. A crowd of slaves gather anxiously as he dismounts and enters the house. The fact that this jump cut has spanned not only such a distance, but such an obvious expanse of time is a signifier that movie audiences by 1911 had become sophisticated enough with the language of film, that such a quick edit as was placed here could convey the story easily, without confusion. We must conclude that this is partially because of their ongoing education in the language of film, and must be credited, at least partially, to Griffith himself, working as he did so assiduously to make these edits lead the mind from one part of a story to a connecting segment in the ever-expanding range of cinematic space-time.

Sennett enters the living room, escorted by George, where he informs McDowell of her husband’s death. He hands her his sword, quickly salutes, and exits. McDowell stands, amazed, holding the proud weapon in her hand, then swoons momentarily before regaining her composure. She dismisses the servants, then quietly sits down alone, finally breaking down in utter loss as she embraces her dead husband’s sword. The moment is a poignant one, and it should not be lost on the audience, that in this form of aristocracy, there is decorum to be maintained. Griffith is sensitive to this, and he is canny enough to allow McDowell her near-breakdown before realizing the inappropriateness of her response. Once she is re-composed, and is alone, only then can she let her true feelings be exposed.

This, I believe, is an important point in Griffith’s romanticization of the Old South. For him, the chivalric codes of behavior that governed this civilization in some way not only compensated, but in many ways justified, the institution of slavery. In a noble world, slavery could be considered a noble estate - particularly if a slave were attached to such a noble family who respected the rules and rights of others. For in McDowell’s sending the servants away, it is not only her decorum that she protects, but it is the feelings of the servants themselves that she spares through an enormously willful act of self control.

Of course, such rules seem sheer madness to us today, and of course we recognize that such decorum shaded brutality with a kind of human theatre that inundated the upper classes to the harsh reality of servility. But it does not take a great deal of imagination to re-construct in Griffith’s mind what he most obviously thought were the genteel rules of a basically noble civilization. Only a pure mass fiction, a great social fantasy could convince such a sensitive and moral mind such as Griffith’s of the institutionalization of such an obvious inhumanity as slavery.

After a title card reminds us of "The Southern Woman’s Heavy Burden," we cut forward to a scene of McDowell directing George to reverently hang the late Colonel’s sword over the mantle. He bows in reverent obeisance to his brave master’s memory.

McDowell then proceeds outside, and in a melancholy march, traverses over a style, where she will presumably spend some solitary rumination. Suddenly, the street before the house is filled with agitated and excited blackface servants who point and gesticulate wildly. Union soldiers immediately fill the street, forcing them back. A hysterical blackface runs for old George, who throws his arms up in horror, then rushes to the front of the house to attempt to block the enemy forces from entering. Cruelly struck down by a rifle butt, the army proceeds on its invasion of the late Colonel’s sanctum.

Once inside, the soldiers proceed with their looting, then return again at the porch, carrying their booty. Not satisfied with thievery, they must then set fire to the honorable old home with a vicious glee.

We see inside the smoke-filled home, that the Colonel’s little daughter is still inside, wandering helplessly. George remembers his "trust," however, and in the nick of time, heedlessly rushes into the burning house to rescue the child. McDowell re-appears from over the stile she had disappeared, sees the carnage, and receives her daughter into her open arms, as George delivers her, then collapses from the exertion and the smoke. Suddenly, he remembers something, then rushes back inside the blazing inferno to retrieve his dead master’s sword hanging over the mantle, manages to escape with the sacred artifact, and returns it to McDowell, before collapsing from smoke exhaustion.

McDowell approaches the front of the house with the little girl to watch it blazing (now, unfortunately looking like a cheap Hollywood prop). We gaze at her gazing from behind, in shock, stoically, so that we share her perspective. Finally, when what is left of the porch collapses, she lifts her arm in horror, then drops her head in sorrow. Her entire world has just crumbled to an end.

George looks on with intense pity and love, then comes slowly, tenderly to her, still watching the blaze, and humbly gestures for her to follow along with him. He delicately takes her wrist in hand to turn her, exhorting her to follow. Her eyes are widened and completely in shock, and she follows George’s gentle tug, uncomprehendingly, the little girl still in tow.

A title card informs us that "George Gives His All," and we cut to the servants’ quarters, a kind of shanty-town on the outskirts of the woods, where the blackfaces are gathered in confusion and woe. George enters the frame, still leading a blank-faced McDowell, and holding the little girl on his old shoulder and his master’s sword proudly in hand. He bows and opens his cabin door to her, and she steps inside behind him.

We cut to the rustic interior of the cabin, plainly decorated, with an old rocking chair. George hangs the sacred sword on his own wall, with reverence, then bids McDowell to sit in his chair. He lays the little girl on his small bed and carefully covers her up. He turns and gestures to McDowell that his tiny cabin is at their disposal, then bows and slowly exits.

Back outside, George emerges from his cabin, the other blackfaces depart, and then he removes an old blanket hanging from the outside wall. He lays it down on the dusty ground, then lays down to take his rest outside his home, in the road. He has indeed surrendered everything, and he has kept his sacred "trust."

Here the film ends, and as it rests, the divided first half of Griffith’s intended two-reeler comes to a suitable close.

Here, we have reached a paradoxically sophisticated level of cinematic storytelling, combined with ridiculously over-sentimentalized content. The chief argument I wish to make here is that the chief fault of His Trust, despite its undeniably great cinematic achievement, is the over-simplicity of its author’s view of the human race, which leads ultimately to a dramatic lack of depth. While his racism is indeed horrific, particularly from today’s perspective, I think that it is important to note that this aspect of his work and legacy, should be seen, finally, as a larger part of a greater deficiency in his aesthetic capacities. I do not wish to belittle racism, but in Griffith, I believe that it is primarily a sub-species of his lack of greater insight into dramatic and human character.

As greatly sophisticated as was his technique, D.W. Griffith was seemingly bound to fail in his appreciation for his human subject matter. And it is with this thought, and this observation, that we will continue to critically view his films, both for signs of just this sort of weakness, and hopefully, the opportunities in which he transcends them.

If Griffith was cinema’s first undisputed master, he remains a very problematic one. This is certainly not a first for a great, but flawed artist, and it will not be the last - particularly in the often-creaky realm of film history.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Userer

The Userer (1910) - This is a virtual remake of A Corner in Wheat, with the same cuts between rich and poor, the same ironic death of the greedy capitalist, and virtually none of the visual poetry that made the first film such a success. One gets the feeling that Griffith was just cranking them out here. Surely, he strongly maintained his moral indignation just as fully as before, but perhaps time was encroaching on him that particular week and little creative or distinctive content resulted.

Actually, there is some ambitious attempts here, particularly in the number of stories being told. The evil Userer (George Nichols, looking unsettlingly Jewish here, with a rotund figure and thick black moustache) has ordered his henchmen to confiscate property on all who cannot immediately pay back their loans. His men visit four separate homes, each of which cannot afford to pay. The jump cuts between the Userer living it up at his banquets (as in Wheat) and those who are suffering to pay for his indulgences, expands the cinematic space and requires the viewers, who must be becoming more sophisticated, to associate cause and effect with a wider world of associations.

There is nothing confusing about The Userer, but there is nothing really compelling about it either. The most poignant scene in the film is when a mother (credited as Kate Bruce, but looking to me very much like Linda Arvidson) is forced to surrender the bed in which her deathly ill daughter is lying. The bed removed, she helps the poor sick girl (a dark-haired Mary Pickford with nothing to do but look as though she is near death) unsteadily to a chair. This scene is nearly unbearable in its pathos, probably because we know that such things did (and continue to) occur.

Another dramatic sequence is a melodramatic jump cut in which one despondent money-ower holds out a gun to shoot himself in the chest. Griffith jumps to the gaiety of the banquet, then back to the man, who slumps to the floor, having pulled the trigger during the duration of the cut. The contrast is thus powerful, and the sense of cause and effect is firmly established.

Finally, though, the film cannot keep that many characters interesting, particularly as there is such repetition in the action. Griffith has expanded his mise-en-scene to over 40 shots here, but very little development of action is revealed - we simply need all these shots to contain all the participants and complete their stories.

Inevitably, the greedy Userer gets his deadly come-uppance by being accidently locked in his own vault overnight. We watch him suffer in his agonizing death throws, as we did the lovers in The Sealed Room (Griffith repeating himself again). But it has nowhere near the emotional impact of the violently unexpected fall of the Wheat King into his grainery. The image was still probably horrific to early movie goers, but for us, what once was dramatic has become dull hack work.

That is probably too harsh. Griffith was extraordinarily prolific, and with his schedule, there is no doubt that he had to resort frequently to self imitation.

As far as his social vision goes, there is no progression. The Userer’s sister (Grace Henderson), resolves after her brother’s horrific death to return all the property and cancel all the debts. That the answers to society’s problems reside in the human heart is nothing new to Griffith or his overly simplistic view of humanity. But shall we castigate him for naivety - or shall we have to conclude that while this view is presented in a hopelessly sentimental manner here, that the basic truth of his assertion rings obviously, clearly true?

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The Unchanging Sea

The Unchanging Sea (1910) - This simple story is told by great economy of means and understated acting. "Suggested by" a poem by Charles Kingsley, "The Three Fishers," The Unchanging Sea tells the story of a poor fisherman (Arthur V. Johnson) and his wife (Linda Arvidson, nee Griffith). We see them first as a young couple, living among the shanty houses stretching across an edge of beach. We see them romping happily on the shoreline. In some manner I cannot tell, he either discerns, or she tells him, that she is pregnant, and they embrace. The next shot shows the happy couple racing through the small populace of the town as everyone shouts their congratulations. How they know the big news is difficult to understand, as the immediate cut from the beach to this scene suggests continuous action. The two of them return, laughing, to their small home.

Act 2 of the drama begins with the title card "OUT TO SEA." Another man knocks at the door, and the fisherman emerges, arrayed for his voyage. The wife follows him fearfully, and clings to him. (What, does she think he’s never going fishing?) Three fishermen kiss their wives good-bye and scramble down to a small boat, which is pushed off the shore by another group of men. The women all stand staring after them as they row out into the surf. The other two women depart, leaving Arvidson, framed alone on the left of the screen, her back to us, holding her hand aloft in a farewell gesture. As the boat pulls out of the frame, she slowly drops her arm and stands, passively staring at the ocean. Griffith shows a lovely touch of poetry here, as he allows the camera to linger on her for quite some time as the surf beats in, suggesting both her sadness and a sense of foreboding.

A title card asks "WILL THEY EVER RETURN?" A large, bearded man with his back to us stares impassively out to sea, as each of the three wives approach him in turn to ask if the boat has returned. He simply shakes his head no to each of them in turn. This repeated device seems superfluous, but it rings with the kind of repetition that one might find in an old folk tale or song - or in this case, in a poem.

Another title card announces "STILL HOPEFUL THEY MAY RETURN." Once again, we see a woman’s back staring out to sea, as Arvidson comes creeping slowly, diagonally into the frame, her body emoting anxiety and fear as she stares out at the empty waves. The repetition of imagery here creates a sense of time passing and fear mounting. How long has it been? Days? Weeks? Griffith’s strong sense of control communicates both the situation and the quiet anxiety of his characters very simply and effectively. Standing behind the women, looking over their shoulders, so to speak, we are placed in a psychological identification with them, and we share in their painful ordeal.

What is not effective, in my opinion, are the continuous interjections of Kingsley’s poem that are repeatedly interjected on these cards in between scenes. As a narrative device, it really does not enhance the story in any meaningful way - and if Griffith is self-consciously trying to elevate film to the level of poetry, he is quite mis-directed about his own medium and its inherent power. The film is much more powerful than the poem, which is merely distracting.

We see a corpse stretched out on the beach, pitching in the surf. Next we see men hauling in two corpses, while our fisherman rides in on a wave, clinging to a piece of debris. Two men haul his limp body ashore and then bring him to a house in their little village.

Here is one of the chief flaws of the film. The beach and the village look precisely like the one from which he came, and at this point, the first-time viewer is naturally going to think that the tragic boat has returned to its home. Rather, it is an entirely different place, which remains unclear until later in the picture. Griffith should have done something to distinguish the places - perhaps even simply swapping the camera angles - instead of fooling around with the stupid poem.

This is made even more confusing in the following shot, where the fisherman’s wife emerges from their little home, now carrying their baby. Okay, we now know how much time has passed, but we are spatially confused. Is her husband back home? Is he dead? What is going on here? I mention this because it seems exceptional that Griffith gets his cinematic time-space muddied so that the audience cannot follow it. I use it as an example of how easy it is to allow film narrative to become muddled, and the high skill at which Griffith generally operates in this regard.

Arvidson takes the little babe down to the beach, still staring out to sea, still waiting.

A title card informs us "RESTORED TO HEALTH BUT HIS MEMORY A BLANK." Our fisherman (Johnson) emerges from the small house where he has been recuperating, dressed like all the other fishermen in the village. He removes his hat and tries to think, but he cannot remember a thing. He’s still hale and hearty, though, and ready for work. The fishermen shake his hand to welcome him aboard. Another title card tells us, "YEARS ROLL BY," and perhaps some of the more perceptive viewers will begin to realize what the actual situation is.

Arvidson sits outside her house with a small girl (little Gladys Egan again!) The mother is getting progressively old, thanks to the Hollywood magic of makeup. Of course, makeup had long been used in theatre, but its application here shows the potential of incorporating another element in order to tell a story in "film time." Here, we can witness years of change by a simple edit. The woman and child are older. The title card is almost superfluous. This realization of the ability to "cut forward" in time advances the potential of filmic narrative enormously. I doubt that this was the first use of this technique, but it is an early and creative one.

Once again, the sad mother returns to the beach, while the little girl runs off to play. A grizzled fisherman approaches the wife and quite rationally explains that her husband isn’t coming back, and proposes that she get together with himself. She simply shakes her head ‘no’ and points back out to sea. The man disappointedly walks away, no doubt thinking she is crazy. (Actually, the viewer would like to know just how this woman and her child have been managing to live for these several years - this is never explained.)

Here is shown perhaps Griffith’s greatest ideal of the human race - constancy. To remain loyal against all odds, as we shall see, is an enduring and defining principle for him. Characters make bonds based on a "trust" of one sort or another, and their ability or inability to maintain it is the judge of their character. It is easy to point out that this is a chief instance of Griffith’s naivety, as he does not let moral ambiguities creep in as they actually would in life. It is this sort of naivety that is going to get him into trouble, and eventually drive him into obsolescence in the quickly changing modern world. But here, there is something still noble, though horribly old fashioned to our eyes, to the point of being simply irrational. But we can accept it here, I believe, due to the age of the film, and we will forgive it. The chief reason that Griffith’s sentimentality succeeds, however, is based on the strength and argument of his images.

We cut back to Johnson, now equally aged, sitting alone, still baffled by his past. A certain symmetry is thus established between the pair, both visually and situationally.

A title reads "THEIR CHILD NOW GROWN," and an even older Arvidson emerges from her house with her charmingly beautiful teenage daughter, embodied perfectly in the stunningly beautiful, full-of-life figure of Mary Pickford. This actor, one of the first true icons of American film stardom, had been appearing in movies since the previous year, but I do not know that she had received any special acclaim or attention as of yet. I tend to doubt it, as she does not appear as a "star" here, and there would have been so many shorts being released so quickly that it would have been difficult for her to have stood out as yet. But here she is, at the glorious age of eighteen, and the amazing sparkle of her screen presence is assuredly preserved in all its potential for the cinematic love cult with America.

Her smiles, her impulsive jumps, her kisses on the cheek of her mother, mark her out immediately as something new and fresh in cinema acting. And when her face makes a brief connection with the camera, there appears a knowing, joyous secret that she seems to be sharing completely with the audience. We are beginning to witness the emergence of that great mythic phenomenon of movie stardom.

She walks, happily supporting her aging mother through the town, when suddenly, she is bumped into by a young man (Charles West). They stop and stare at each other. Mary then moves on with her mother while West stares back at her, awestruck. Suddenly, Mary swishes her head around to gaze back at him, then returns with wide girlish grin, continuing on her way. It is an impetuous action, taken quite naturally and charmingly, and it expresses both her situation and her character in an instant. In just a few seconds, Mary Pickford has momentarily become the center of the film.

West gazes after her as they leave, then follows them, as though in a trance, back to their house. Standing outside their door, just as they enter, Pickford glances back his way again and laughs, both amused and delighted by this young man’s attention.

After standing and staring like a zombie at their closed door for about ten seconds, an unnecessary title informs us, "THE BOY PERSEVERES." As we see mother and daughter walking once again by the sea, mother moves inextricably onward, facing the waters of the past that hold her mesmerized. Daughter turn quickly, however, and sits coquettishly on a log, waiting for West to approach her. He sits next to her and offers here something, whilst she, being coy, turns her head away disdainfully. He continues his offer, though, and she rises slowly, moving toward him with an uncertain demeanor and sits down right next to him. He holds up what we see is a ring, and she smiles, shakes her head yes, then offers up her finger to be enwrapped by the band. Hence, Griffith makes short work of their courtship, but even with this strict economy, Pickord’s presence makes the entire proceeding credible.

Act III begins with the title card "AFTER MANY YEARS AGAIN TO SEA," after which we see the now-elder Johnson being once again called out to a boat. (What has he been doing all these years - just leaning against a wall?) As before, men push the fishing boat out into the surf.

We cut back to the now-married couple dressed in wedding clothes, bidding the old mother good bye. The parting is sad, but life must go on. Arvidson is left alone in front of her old house, attempts to remain calm, but then breaks down completely, crying into her apron.
A man watches the fishermen make their landing. They get out of their little boat and move towards him. As Johnson arrives fully into medium frame, he suddenly jerks off his hat in recognition of his environment. Ignoring the others, he rushes on, and out of the frame.

Griffith cuts once again to Arvidson walking alone down to the beach, still weeping and alone. She turns to gaze at the pitiless sea. Her life is over, all her dreams now empty.

"FAMILIAR SCENES RESTORE HIS MEMORY." A man stands gazing at the town, the surrounding cliffs. Johnson enters the shot in a daze, spinning about in shock and wonder. His long, stiff hair exaggerates his sense of disorientation. The man recognizes him and explains to him where and who he is. Excitedly, Johnson shakes the man’s hand, who then takes him off camera.

The cut is back to Arvidson, her head down, still facing the sea. She is framed on the left and left standing there for a few seconds. The man enters with Johnson from the right, then leaves him there. He stands staring at her, unbelievably, then thrusts out his arms to her, her back still to us. Slowly, she turns to look at him and gazes uncertainly into his eyes. As she recognizes her long-lost husband, she begins breathing heavily. She begins to make a rush to him, but stops herself and softly grabs his arm. He is desperately explaining who he is, and she shakes her head in recognition, stroking gently on his arm. Finally, she accepts the miraculous truth, and the couple embraces passionately. The end logo immediately appears.

This scene is played with such tenderness, such understatement, by both of the actors that it is truly moving, even to the most cynical modern-day viewer. Griffith, with his actors, are developing a new acting style for the medium - one less melodramatic and elegantly poetic. There seems to be a sharp realization that one can and even must do less on the big screen to get one’s point effectively across. This shot, like those of the noble farmers in A Corner in Wheat, takes its time and allows the actors to to take the time and dramatically underplay their roles, without wild gesticulations. The human content is thus rendered more realistic, and a genuine pathos is allowed to emanate from the characters.

The Unchanging Sea may not be a masterpiece, but Griffith is getting so much more out of his basic elements, that unquestionably he will be able to easily expand, based upon the strengths being worked out in these early shorts, that when his narratives begin to expand, he will be light years ahead of his contemporaries.

Aside from their historical significance, there is a charm to these early movies that has not yet been diluted from repetition, laziness and cynicism. There is an earnestness to films like The Unchanging Sea that give them a timelessness that holds a great sense of nobility. The simplicity of the scenarios, the unabashed dedication to produce something of value, and the rhythmic successes and discoveries of artistic ensembles who are becoming increasingly professionalized all combine to keep the content fresh.

And the ambition of the director is clearly shown, not from his misplaced notion to turn a moving picture into a poem, but rather, to have the vision to see a movie’s potential to function fully as art, like a poem, on its own terms. The poem is a piece of hackwork - the film is a flawed work of art that is genuinely moving and inspired.

There is a profundity in the title that is captured admirably in the work. Although the trope used to create the story may be contrived, the circular story of life is expressed in its own "unchanging" terms. Young lovers grow old and are replaced by their children, and the cycle continues. As seen in the farmers in A Corner in Wheat, the unending cycles of life are what appeals to D.W. Griffith’s highest aesthetic sensibility. And it is this sensitivity to the cycles (and disruptions) of eternal time that will inspire his greatest works.