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.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
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.
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.
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.
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