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.