The Massacre (1914)

The Massacre (1914) - The Biograph title screen dates this film as 1912 - which is the year given on the package’s box. I have no idea whether these title screens are originals for the films, however. The Internet Movie Data Base lists The Massacre as 1914, following The Battle at Elderbush Gulch of 1913, and immediately preceding Griffith’s first full-length feature, Judith of Bethulia (1914). I have no way of knowing exactly which dating is correct, but I am inclined to believe the IMBD chronology. The Massacre, clocking in at half an hour (Judith would be a full hour’s length) seems to me to be Griffith’s largest, most ambitious project to date, and one can sense him straining at the bit to put bigger, more grandiose and complex stories up on the screen.

Of course there are the obvious parallels to Elderbush Gulch - both are two-reel films depicting skirmishes between white pioneers and Native Americans. Somehow, though, The Massacre feels quite a bit more accomplished than Elderbush Gulch, especially in the staging of the (relatively) enormous battle sequences that take up the bulk of the film.

It is difficult to say, actually, which film is the most ideologically - not to mention dramatically - interesting. Elderbush Gulch has the more original and compelling story, featuring the novelty of the plot line, and more time spent on developing character. That’s on the "White" side, anyway - the "Indian" side is depicted as ridiculously savage and brutal - the ritual "dog feast" seems intentionally designed to make the Indians seem freakish, as well as savage.

The Massacre, on the other hand, hands us a real moral ambiguity, if not an out-an-out statement of a more realistic morality. There are actually two "massacres" in the film. The first one is carried out by the U.S. army against a seemingly peaceful, sleeping Indian village. There is no attempt to give any background to this struggle, and no indictments of the Indians are thrown to the audience. They are simply attacked and killed, apparently for no good reason.

If Griffith does not make a case against the natives, I cannot say that he quite definitively makes a case against the American army, and the policy of genocide that he apparently quite understood.

He does do one thing that is quite special here - and I think that it is very telling. This may be as subtle as Griffith ever gets, but there is definitely a comparison/contrast used between two families - one white and one Indian. In earlier scenes, Griffith takes great care to highlight the love of the young couple going west (Charles West and Blanche Sweet), with special emphasis on their child. The long, loving close ups of this child are striking, as they are quite unusual for Griffith at this point. We are meant to be made very aware of the specialness, and the uniqueness of this babe, and consequently, to enter into a protective state of mind for him for the rest of the film.

Later, as the unwary Indians rest in their teepees, oblivious to the danger that surrounds them, Griffith gives us an interior shot of a young Indian woman with a lovely papoose on her back. Her husband, the Indian brave, enters the teepee and tenderly places his hand upon them both. There is nothing elaborately done in the way of drawing a parallel between the two families, but it is undeniably, and intentionally there.

Later, in the aftermath of the cavalry’s savage attack upon the village, Griffith shows us some remaining bodies in a stark composition. In the foreground lies the young woman, face down, her dead baby on her back.

This is a very shocking and moving image, and I find it remarkably unquestionable that Griffith should be arguing a kind of moral equivalency here, as early as 1914, well before the American cinematic myth of Indians as savages had been codified. But it had been codified in American literature and popular imagination - and Griffith certainly wished to draw a transcendent human perspective to the situation. That he did not take this theme any further is probably due to his not wishing the film to become a polemic, and wishing to get back to his own "settlers in peril" second half of the film, for which he would have been well aware that it was here that his audience’s concerns and sympathies would ultimately reside.

There is no mistaking, however, the especial effort on the director’s part to be morally even handed, even if his purpose is not explicitly condemning the acts of the U.S. government. In Griffith’s sensibility, all of this fighting is equally tragic - equally pathetic. (He will return to this concept with great moral force in The Birth of a Nation, where this Southern director will treat both Union and Confederate forces with an equality of respect - unfortunately, to call that film’s racial content problematic would be a massive understatement.)

As the family joins a wagon train under the supervision and protection of the army, they come in direct collision with the Indian chief’s plan for revenge. As the film reaches its climactic moment, Sweet sits, huddling over her precious babe in the center of a dwindling circle of dying soldiers and settlers, as the Indians rampage relentlessly until the group’s utter destruction.

When her husband, West, arrives with reinforcements, we see nothing remaining but a pile of bodies - an image that we post-Holocaust Westerners automatically associate with the outrages of the Nazi death camps. It is one of the most unnerving images yet put on the screen - but is it any more horrible than the dead Indian woman and her baby shown earlier? Griffith’s great theme, as he continues to expand it, is man’s inhumanity to man. And if he had kept his eye squarely on this vision, we would not have the problems that we do with him today.

However, The Massacre cannot have a purely tragic ending, and it is discovered that the man’s wife and child are alive underneath his rival’s (Wilfred Lucas) dead body - another depiction of selfless sacrifice. Still, as relieved as we are for the survival of Sweet and the beautiful little child, we cannot call this a "happy ending."

There has been too much devastation, too much destruction. And perhaps, most importantly, the survival of the white family does not remove the horror of the deaths of the Indian family. By playing to his audience, Griffith totters very close to the very racism that he was so blatantly trying to avoid.

But this is D.W. Griffith - and once again, D.W. Griffith is a very naive man. His vision and his character are impeccably admirable, and his humanist (and artist’s) sensibility) puts him in great intuitive touch with moral ambiguities that does transcend his vision far above the ordinary. But he does not seem capable of seeing the ironies of his art all the way through - he cannot seem to follow them completely to their logical conclusion.

On a technical and purely emotion level, the film is absolutely brilliant. High shots from hillsides of massive waves of swarming warriors on horseback both astound the audience and allow it to follow the direction and consequences of the action. By this point, I am quite certain that no one else in the world could have coordinated and captured such amazing, complex and terrifying action with such precision, realism and astounding rhythm. After more than 400 films, D.W. Griffith has reached an incomparable mastership of controlling this new medium, especially on a large scale. Try to imagine any director attempting such a similar feat at the time - or any director after him without having him for a model, and it is simply inconceivable.

Likewise, his careful treatment of individuals and small details are just as astonishingly beautiful and surprising. The Massacre features not only great performances from its primary characters, but develops several interesting minor characters that seem to inhabit their lives fully - gamblers, preachers, children, buckaroos with small, touching gestures. Some of these characters come into conflict, only to be drawn together by their common threat - and their common humanity. Heroes suddenly emerge who were scoundrels a few scenes before. Griffith is very sensitive to the human milieu, the entire panoply of different eccentricities that go into making mankind both unique and yet, ultimately, irreducibly equal.

There is no question that there is by this point a new major art form at work, and a great artist controlling and directing it. One last observation will make my point. A fat gambler sits in front of his wagon that is painted with a single Ace of Spades - suckering in other travelers wearily and desperately looking for fun and perhaps fortune under the desert skies. Later, at the last stand, this same man embraces the preacher who was earlier upbraiding him as he fires his gun in frantic defense of the group. When he is shot dead, the deck of cards he still holds begins tumbling out of his hand - leaving him clutching only the same Ace of Spades - the death card - as he expires.

Only cinema can provide poetic moments like this - images that go beyond words and beyond the explanation of their power.

The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913)

In this two-reeler, expansive, action-packed western, Griffith is moving closer and closer to the grand sprawl that he will present in just two years’ time. By the production’s standards of the time, this film is extremely large - it almost could be called enormous, even a blockbuster. I wonder what its response was in its day.

Here and everywhere, we find Griffith pushing the fabric of what could be put on screen. What we have here is essentially: an all-star cast, dozens of extras, dramatic action, two stories - a plot and subplot that interleave at the end, very large, controlled battle scenes, innovative point of view shots, particularly from very high angles, and a storming momentum throughout most of the entire 29 minutes of screen time. Shortly stated, this has to be one of the very most ambitious films ever undertaken to this point in time.

To a large degree, Griffith manages to pull off this audacity of spectacle. If the final result is less than impressive today, here is one movie that one must see with backward-looking eyes to imagine just how powerful such a vast and violent epic might have appeared to audiences in 1914.

As a western - that is as an early contributor to one of the major genres in American film history - The Battle at Elderbush Gulch is difficult to judge. Its western setting seems more an excuse for filming action rather than an exploration of any of the basic mythic elements of the genre. We have white settlers, we have Indians - and yes, we have violent conflict, ending with the arrival of the U.S. Cavalry.

But it is difficult to assign any true perspective upon the myth of conquest from this film. As for the Indians, Griffith depicts them very simply, as savages, sleeping out in the open, eating dogs, and jumping around maniacally - is this supposed to be a ritual war dance? - before attacking the white settlers. But Griffith gives them an undeniably excellent reason for the attack. The Chief’s son has been shot to death by one of the white men. The tribe is naturally enraged, and they come on horseback, guns blazing, to exact revenge.

The white settlers, on the other hand, are simply going about their daily business. The ranch upon which most of the action takes place has now become the home for two female "waifs" - orphans, who are now staying with their cowpoke uncle. This good man’s boss won’t allow any dogs in his house, thus setting up the problem that the girls’ little puppies will cause when two young Indians wander back late for a doggy feast.

Soon, it’s all-out war between the two peoples. The Indians invade the ranch and storm the town. The subplot - the "town plot" deals with a mother (Lillian Gish) and her baby, who has disappeared and become a potential victim for the marauders. So essentially we have the same situation as in Griffith’s first film, The Adventures of Dollie (1908) - a helpless child is threatened by ethnically different people.

I don’t want to go too deeply into the racial implications of this film, except to note that Griffith’s decision necessarily implies a white perspective. If "different" in his world does not equal "evil," it at least conjures up "other." We can’t imagine the movie showing an Indian child in danger from the white settlers.

Hollywood’s myopia concerning Native Americans begins early in its history - but that was merely an extension of the prevailing views of the time, as close as they were (in 1914) to actual skirmishes out west and on the plains. It is the same carry over as in Griffith’s "southern" attitude towards Blacks. All Hollywood will do is solidify and codify the myths about savage Indians for another forty years or so, until these assumptions will begin to be challenged in the 1950s and 60s.

The production and acting of Elderbush Gulch is superb. The performances are thoroughly professional throughout: featuring Gish, newcomer Mae Marsh, Alfred Paget, Robert Harron, along with small cameos from Griffith’s other stock players. It is a film that is perhaps more impressive for what it achieves than it is enjoyable to watch, however. At least from my perspective, the near-century of repetition has almost completely worn down any residual power that the film once had. But there is no question that it is a technical triumph and another important giant step forward towards the establishment of cinema as a major art form from its most important early master.

The Mothering Heart (1913)

What can one say about this film? In one sense, it seems the culmination of all work that Griffith had done for Biograph - and at the same time it represents the kind of hokey melodrama and Victorian values that the director is too often linked. The truth is somewhere in the middle - there is no question of The Mothering Heart’s old-fashioned melodramatic overtones, yet there is a naturalness and an honesty that seems to shine forth throughout it, essentially overcoming it. There’s something here that seems to turn the film into a true tragedy, as well as an artful depiction of human affairs that speak directly to an audience the way only the new medium of cinema could.

Of course, the primary key to the film is found through the extraordinary film presence and unique acting style of Lillian Gish in the lead role. There is something so natural, so fresh about Gish’s performance, something so absolutely convincing, that it drives the film home, making it truly heartbreaking rather than simply maudlin.

This is not to say that the film isn’t maudlin as well, for it certainly is. All the faults are there, in plain view. Griffith has made many more imaginative and innovative films than this one, but there is something about The Mothering Heart that is simply unmatchable in sheer emotional power. To make something this commanding, with these few elements, is a testament to a certain kind of mastery - and an indicator that this long, tried-and-tested veteran of early cinema is ready to move the art form on to another level of sustained narrative and emotional impact. The director has only a dozen or more one-reelers left to make for American Biograph (out of more than 400!) before leaving to direct the four-reel feature Judith of Bethulia. One year later, he will create The Birth of a Nation, and the modern age of cinema will have formally begun.

Griffith plays with archetypes in The Mothering Heart - a less kindly critic might call them cliche’s. Gish plays the role of a young wife, and eventually mother, with such immaculately chaste and pure emotions that she becomes, in essence, the era’s pin-up girl for feminine propriety. On the other hand, her natural joyfulness, her native instinct for play endears her totally to the audience and creates a kind of purely believable icon of the best of young American womanhood.

She is matched perfectly on screen with Walter Miller, her inconstant and befuddled male counterpart. Miller (Gish’s musician husband in The Musketeers of Pig Alley, as well as the spurned-lover, good-guy partner in Death’s Marathon) is really a more pitiable character than a cad. With disarming, Jimmy Stewart-like confusion, he is sincerely in love with Gish, as well as seriously baffled at his own contradictory desires and his pitiful puppy-dog wandering.

Perhaps that is the central link that binds this film together so well - the conflicting human emotions are quite real. The young Miller is completely in love with Gish’s mothering character, and at the same time, he cannot seem to resist his natural urges for frolicsome fun.

The central - and for me, the most uncomfortable - sequence of the film is when Miller convinces Gish to go out to a nightclub for some uninhibited good times. Gish’s discomfort at the nightclub is unsettling - why can’t she relax and have a fun evening? Her fastidious prudishness is off putting, and her refusal to share a glass of champagne is tangibly annoying. Can we really blame the young husband for being attracted by the bare-armed temptress at the next table?

Well, yes and no. To us today, the problem seems to be that Miller has gotten himself stuck in an either/or world which simply does not exist for us in the next century. Of course there is a question as to whether this dichotomy actually existed in 1913, but I have enough personal family evidence to suggest that it certainly did. When women were easily divided up between "mothers" and "tramps," it’s easy to see how there might be no gray area in between.

Griffith, naturally, is on the side of the "mothers." And following his loaded narrative, there is no question that Miller is the character in error and that Gish is the one who must unjustly suffer for her husband’s shortcomings. And of course, disaster looms in the end. The question is, is this really how Griffith saw life? Is this how he saw woman?

I find enough evidence in this collection of films to suggest that D.W. Griffith, though a naive sentimentalist, was morally more complex than one might at first assume. In One Is Business, the Other Crime, he goes to great pains to show the unjust parallel between treatment of justice in class relations. Religious hypocrites are taken to task in The New York Hat. The Burglar’s Dilemma demonstrates that even familial betrayal can be overcome through love and a good will. And The Last Drop of Water shows us that one need not be an exemplary person to prove a valiant hero.

But when it comes to women’s issues, however - as it will come to race - Griffith seems much much more inflexible. It is in his unquestioning acceptance of the stereotypes of his age - for both gender and race, that he runs into such insupportable moral and aesthetic conditions.

The great irony is that these blind spots placed Griffith in a morally indefensible position that he really could not probably see. By siding so whole-heartedly with Gish’s "mother" figure, he believes he is championing the cause of womanhood. Ironically, he is selling the human center of the female frightfully short, demanding her to place both herself and her husband in an impossible world of ego division.

By the same token, it is easy to see that in celebrating the "virtues" of the old Negro in His Trust, that while attempting to laud and celebrate Old George, he is essentially taking away both the character’s dignity and humanity.

That is, it is easy for us to see this. For Griffith would remain tragically unaware of the implications of his own moral universe. And this is sad, because we continually see in cinema’s first great artist a towering nobility and defender of humanity. We see a man with a sense of moral ambiguity - a man who can respect even a gangster’s honor in the covenant of "one good turn deserves another." The ultimate tragedy of Griffith, however, just may reside in his entrapment in certain social conventions that are glacially solidified in his time-bound sense of consciousness. In the end, he was basically and simply, quite unaware of the terrible moral ironies that he would commit to the screen.

Inside D.W. Griffith, however, lies a "great heart." At the end of The Mothering Heart, the most emotionally wrenching and authentic moment of the film is finally not the husband’s betrayal of his wife - nor even the devastating death of the couple’s sickly little baby. It is, indeed, the great wash of forgiveness and acceptance that Gish offers to the devastated Miller, a boundless generosity of spirit that bind the two - and indeed all of humanity - in a shared redemption based on the undying and unquenchable spirit of human love and the capaciousness of grace.

It is true that much of Griffith’s work will forever seem not only outmoded - not simply morally inadequate, but at times truly repugnant. But there exists within his moral and aesthetic vision such a broad and heartfelt commitment to the dictums of love and the eternal dignity of humanity, that we must search beyond the surface to reach the good (however flawed) man underneath. This is not just conscientiousness on our part, but it is the very essence of the vision that the artist and his art held out as a proud banner for the human race.

Death's Marathon (1913)

Here’s a little potboiler that, while it falls short of Griffith’s best work of the period, is notable for the shocking effect of violence and some deranged acting from the bizarrely versatile Henry B. Walthall (the "Weakling Brother" of The Burglar’s Dilemma.) The plot, basically, is pure melodramatic hocum - the only thing that truly makes Death’s Marathon interesting is the unexpected shock ending - plus Walthall’s hammy, but weird, performance.

Walthall and the dashing young Walter Miller (the handsome Musician from The Musketters of Pig Alley), are business partners. They both have a love wish for the lovely Blanche Sweet (who is hardly given anything to do in the picture but sit around looking charming or pitiful.) Sweet rebuff’s Miller’s advances, but takes to the cocky Walthall. In a year, the couple are married and with child. Walthall, however, is bored with domestic life and would rather spend his evenings at the club, playing high stakes poker. On a losing slide, Walthall steals money from the company safe to go play, which is discovered by Miller, who tries to chase him down. Too late - he’s blown it all - and now he’s on his way back to the office, where he pulls out a revolver, determined to do away with himself.

Oddly, he calls his wife on the phone first. Arriving there in time for the call, Miller, along with Sweet, attempt to talk him out of it. Sweet stays on the phone with him as Miller races back to the office to stop him. All her tears and persuasion cannot dissuade him - even an emotional communication with their baby son cannot do it. Miller arrives, but too late - Walthall has blown his brains out.

The last scene shows Sweet, at home alone. Miller delivers roses to her, and their shared happy smiles are supposed to tell us that they will soon be together, living happily ever after.

The film’s structure, which is basically a chase in the second half, is pretty conventional by the standards of the day. Griffith uses his usual jump cuts to set up and intensify the tension leading up to what one expects to be Walthall’s rescue or change of heart. But there is no rescue - and there is no change of heart. I have to conclude that the climax was quite a shock for the audience in 1913.

One has to ask oneself what Griffith was thinking when he made this decision. The writing credit goes to a William E. Wing, a relative newcomer to film writing. But Griffith could certainly have changed the ending had he wanted to. There’s something just a little diabolical about Death’s Marathon - it’s as though Griffith had wanted to finally let the audience know that he would not always let them off the hook - thus returning credibility for suspense to a medium that might have been becoming a bit too predictable by 1913.

Whatever else can be said about Death’s Marathon, there’s a kind of sadistic fun at work in it, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Walthall’s long and strange performance over the phone to his wife and partner. One cannot tell what he is saying, but he is certainly taking his time about it. He grins evilly at the gun throughout the long conversation, knowing for certain it is what he is going to do. What he seems to relish is the torture that he is putting his wife through on his way to oblivion.

How can we explain this? Well, one suggestion is that Walthall is just a nasty guy - he certainly doesn’t give a hoot about his wife, and at one point in the film even threatens to slap her for wanting to go out with him. I suppose the ending implies that Sweet made the wrong choice at the beginning of the film with the two fellows - yet if she really didn’t fancy Miller then, why should she any more now?

One can say that Griffith is (rather heavy handedly) giving a warning about vices such as gambling. But that matter is so much on the surface and the subtext of Walthall’s strange performance and the agonizingly stretched out taunting of the wife (and the audience) suggests something a bit more sinister about the cinema.

Who knows how banal Death’s Marathon was when it was begun? Did Walthall’s crazed acting suggest a new direction during the filming? Perhaps it originally had a happy ending? This is just idle speculation, of course, but it would make sense of what we are seeing on the screen. Here, Griffith has taken good, old-fashioned Victorian melodrama and twisted it just enough to make something with a nasty little bite.

It’s important to note this tendency in Griffith if we are not to fall into the trap of oversimplifying him. Moral ambiguities in such films as The Painted Lady, The Musketeers of Pig Alley, and Death’s Marathon display something of more subversive depth lurking under the surface of the Griffith world, and it’s something to keep one’s eye on. It is this very subversive tendency, perhaps inherent to the film-making process itself, that will deliver some of its most iconoclastic character of cruelty.

The Burglar's Dilemma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New York Hat (1912)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Painted Lady

The Painted Lady (1912) - Well, this is a bizarre and sadistic little fable - and I call it a "fable" because there seems to be some underlying, yet incomprehensible, moral about the evils of wearing makeup hidden in the subtext. I could quite be wrong here, however, and the pathos of the heroine’s descent into madness could quite be associated with her sense of low self esteem, and makeup is simply a poetic metaphor for a projection of herself onto a different plane of perception.

If I sound confused, it’s because I am. At the very bottom of The Painted Lady is a meaning that seems quite elusive to me. Perhaps I am trying to over-read the film. Perhaps it should best be taken for what it apparently is - a mean little melodrama that gives a talented young film actress plenty of space to act with her face.

This is certainly an actor’s vehicle. Blanche Sweet, who we saw kidnapped and placed in danger of a gang rape in The Lesser Evil, suffers a more severe, inward, psychological damage in this film. Sweet, all of sixteen years old here, looks more mature than she is putting on - this is definitely one of the early screen’s most talented and assured actresses. (Sweet would later go on to play the title role in Griffith’s first "feature" film, Judith of Bethulia [1914], which in very unfortunately not currently available on DVD.)

Sweet portrays the unnamed "Older Sister" in a household of four. Her "Younger Sister," portrayed with aplomb by the delightfully coquettish Madge Kirby, powders and paints her face to perfection in order to get the fellows to dote on her. She tries to get big sister to loosen up and paint up herself. But sweet Blanche is having no part of it. The result? Little sis gets all the attention at the church social while poor, plain Blanche gets the cold shoulder.

This is a puzzling situation, simply because we do not know Blanche’s reasoning here. Yes, her father (Charles Hill Mailes) is a stiff old gruff with a beard, but parental repression does not seem to faze Little Sister. Just what is making Blanche such a wallflower? Is it guilt from sexual repression - or perhaps just shyness? Blanche is certainly pretty enough, but she keeps her hair knotted up and her face as plainly blank as it can be.

What is going on underneath all this, we’d like to know? The film really doesn’t give evidence of exactly what Blanche’s dilemma is - all we do is see her react. And it is clear that, for whatever reason, this young lady is a fragile package already - and we are all the more ready to accept her subsequent crumbling.

Getting on with the plot, two "plotters" are sizing up the rich old man’s house. One of them, Joseph Graybill, looking affable in his straw hat and mustache, is greeted by the kindly minister, and is introduced around, arriving eventually with Blanche, who has gone off to suffer in self pity. The stranger ingratiates himself with Blanche, who is stunned and flattered by this newcomer’s interest in and apparent attraction to her.

We can see the transformation occurring on Blanche’s face, and her beauty is drawn out as she is coaxed from her shell by this handsome flatterer. Later, she escapes out her window for a secret rendezvous with the young fellow, where he flatters her some more.

However, it is all a subterfuge. All the stranger really wants is information about her father’s "business," which Blanche eventually provides. Here, the narrative breaks down - what information on earth does this man want from Blanche. He’s a burglar - is she going to give him the safe combination? Even if she knew it, wouldn’t such a question make her a tad suspicious?
At any rate, this detail proves unimportant to the psychological drama.

The new "boyfriend" dons a heavy coat, hat and masks his face and sneaks into the house. Blanche, left alone, realizes that there is an intruder and enters to confront him with a gun (!!!) (Where did this silly girl get a gun? Surely Griffith was not making a gun-control argument, but it certainly works as one here.) The burglar overpowers her, however, and in a struggle, the gun discharges, killing the intruder dead.

It is when Blanche has realized what has happened that she begins her terrifying descent into madness, beginning with a very effective display of hysterics. One can easily imagine most anyone reacting with emotional horror in such a situation, though. It is only when she has regained her control enough to look at the man’s face - and see that it is her new love that she has inadvertently killed, that she really begins to lose it. There are no histrionics here - she simply goes blank.

Father and Sister arrive home and discover the circumstances. Father takes Blanche into the hall to recover, but she has slipped into a kind of unbelieving catatonia. Sweet’s underplaying of the character here is very effective - and disturbing.

What is much more disturbing, however, is Blanche’s behavior later, after some time has passed. Obviously, still remaining in a mental fog, Blanche rises and surreptitiously exits the house to return to the little arbor where she had met with her "boyfriend" before. Here, she enters, relaxed and lovely as can be, and chats lovingly with the thin air, believing him still to be there. This has to be one of the most chillingly bizarre scenes ever shot in cinema up to this point - and it still holds its power today, nearly a century later.

The idea for the shot is spooky enough - it is Sweet’s magnificent portrayal of complete delusion that sells the scene, however. Sweet is so naturally charming and flirtatious in her utter madness that it is a bit overwhelming to watch. Once again, it is by underplaying the strange part that makes the performance so powerful, and we must assume that Griffith had a great deal to do with that, as that is one of his great trademarks.

The creepiness compounds as Blanche’s mother (Kate Bruce), noticing her missing, shows up to find her daughter in this condition. Sweet does not blink, but simply introduces her mother to her invisible beau. Mother plays along and greets the invisible gentleman.

I believe that if the film simply faded out and ended here, we would have a strange and satisfying conclusion to the film. Yet there is another scene to come.

Later, back at home, Blanche picks up the powder puff belonging to her sister, and moving to the mirror, uncertainly powders her face for another meeting with her "boyfriend." Moving back to the arbor, she greets him again. However, for some reason, she pauses to look at herself in a small mirror. When she sees that she is "painted," she is horrified, and collapses, presumably dead, into her arriving father’s arms. The mother soon joins them in this tableau, and it is here that the film ends.

Just what has happened here? Are we to interpret Sweet’s derangement as somehow related to the "false face" of the makeup - and if so, just how? What hidden force persuades her to powder her face - and why does her recognition of it exact such a profound jolt as to apparently kill her?
Lord knows exactly what Griffith had in mind here. Unless I am missing something either terribly obvious or something terribly obtuse, there seems to be a major flaw in the story telling of the film.

Does makeup somehow create Sweet’s downfall? Or are we simply watching the haphazard cues which gradually overwhelm an already vulnerable and overly sensitive girl? Just what is this film attempting to get at anyway?

I am afraid I just cannot quite crack this nut. But the film is definitely worthwhile for Sweet’s extraordinary performance and the psychological subtleties of the drama itself, difficult as they are to decode. But I have to admit that this is a cruel film, and quite difficult to watch. Cruelty to women will be a major theme in cinema, from Griffith on up to our own day. This is as good a place as any to begin to ponder it and its aesthetic/moral implications.

Friends

Friends (1912) - Speaking of the growing phenomenon of star power, this is the first film I have ever seen that features a credit of the cast - at the beginning of the film no less. I think that we must assume that certain actors were becoming recognizable by film audiences at this point. There are indeed four "stars" to this picture - the primary attraction being the return of Mary Pickford after a year’s sojourn with Griffith rival Thomas H. Ince at IMP (Independent Moving Pictures Co. of America). Sharing the credits with the now-20-year-old veteran are Henry B. Walthall, Lionel Barrymore and Harry Carey.

Friends is a very simply shot, straightforward story which seems designed to give the actors room to play, and they all emote quite well on screen. Standing out especially is Walthall (who will go on to portray the Little Colonel in The Birth of a Nation) as a suave western dandy, prefiguring Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler by nearly thirty years.

Griffith opens with a close-up of Pickford, and the following title card tells us that she is Dora, an orphan in a Colorodo mining town. Pickford’s name appears on the card again, implying that Biograph is attempting to both capitalize on her name for drawing power, as well as to help promote her fame.

As the film proper begins, we see Dora alone in her room. A title card introduces Dandy Jack, a gambler, repeating Walthall’s name the same way it announced Pickford. This is an interesting strategy of trying to help the audience identify and remember the actors, as well as the characters. Clearly, the exploitation of players to sell a film is well underway at this point.

Dandy Jack rides up the street on his horse, then enters a saloon, where he is hailed by all the men, lustily drinking away. Pickford exits her room, then begins to descends the stairs that a quick cut will demonstrate that she lives upstairs over the bar. She calls out to Dandy Jack and invites him upstairs.

I was rather shocked on first viewing, as Pickford was seemingly playing a prostitute. But it turns out that Dandy Jack is her boyfriend - but here Griffith atypically leaves their sexual relationship ambiguous and not a little suggestive.

Dora returns to her room, waiting impatiently, while Dandy Jack remains at the bar, seemingly oblivious. In a nice touch, Pickford stomps her foot on the floor to get his attention below, but Dandy Jack just smiles and gestures her off.

I just have to take a moment to note how quickly and economically Griffith has established that Dora lives in a room over the bar. Very simple cuts, as I mentioned before, made this clear to the audience. But in essence, a larger story is being told. We are given no background on the relationship between this pair, but we can easily imagine an entire past for these two characters, as Dora must have met Dandy Jack as he frequented the bar, and that this was how their relationship began, and about which it is still surrounded and defined.

When Dora finally coaxes Dandy Jack to come up, he simply opens her door and walks in - apparently he has quite free license with her. Dandy Jack informs her that he’s leaving town in search of bigger money. She wants to go with him, but Jack informs her in no uncertain terms that she is staying where she is. Dora bursts into tears. The swell-dressed heel manages to look a bit guilty, but still departs quickly. He goes back down the bar, wishes everyone a goodbye, then exits out into the street. Dora watches him ride away weepily from her window above. He exits with a swagger, bidding the town farewell - there is a marvelous little gesture where he swoops one way down the street, then turns back to exit the other way, lending his character more charisma and braggadocio.

A third title card introduces Bob Kyne, a miner, played by Harry Carey. Carey remains in the background behind two other miners, panning his gold. One has to wonder whether this was originally planned (or even shot) as a longer film, as Carey simply appears here, and has nothing at all to do with the consequent action.

The fourth title card announces Grizzley Fallon, a wandering prospector, played by Lionel Barrymore. Fallon approaches Dandy Jack, who has come to give his good byes to the miners. He is all beefy, outdoors good will, and he shakes Jack’s hand with great enthusiasm. They are as fine a pair as you would want to see out in the wild - two characters so different, but with genuine affection for one another. Griffith and his two actors here achieve a wonderfully incongruous portrait of life out in the great West and the unlikely comradeship of such diverse characters.

Carey comes into the scene and holds Jack’s horse, so he is at least given something to do. (Was Harry Carey a known film actor at this time?) Both miners wave heartily as Jack rides away.
We return to the street in front of the hotel/saloon in which Dora lives, and watch Fallon’s arrival. This is an interesting shot throughout the picture, as people come and go (or simply sit) in the foreground, down the road behind, other characters are continually attending to other business of their own. Here, there is a little square dance taking place out in the street, and with this simple device, Griffith manages to demonstrate the existence of an entire community with very few shots.

Fallon enters the bar, presumably looking to get a room. Meanwhile, upstairs, Dora is still pining away for her Dandy Jack. She puts on a shawl and hat and heads downstairs. She comes into the bar flirtatiously. Several of the men offer her their arms to take her on a stroll outside, but Dora coquettishly rebuffs them.

Heading alone out into the street, she is followed by big Grizzly Fallon, standing on the porch looking after her, indeed like a big bear. He follows her up the street until she runs into a male acquaintance who formally introduces Fallon to her. Dora remains stand offish and continually moves away from Fallon, who each time scratches his head with perplexed frustration.

They move back into the bar, and as Dora begins her ascent back up to her room, Barrymore delivers a wonderful John Wayne-type comic motion of removing another man’s hat in her presence. He follows to the stairs, where she finally smiles and shakes his hand in acquaintance. There is no real explanation for her delay - Dora was evidently simply being coy.

Back upstairs, we observe Dora thinking, and Pickford delivers a subtle smile and a shrug suggesting that - who knows? - she might as well consider the big lug. However, a few moments later, she is looking at a photograph of Dandy Jack in a frame. There’s no real contest between the two men, but Jack is gone now, isn’t he?

Meanwhile Fallon approaches her door and knocks deferentially - a great contrast to the smooth entrance of Dandy Jack - and Dora stands, attempting to decide what to do. Her mind goes back and forth while she leaves the big guy dangling outside, but she finally resolves her dilemma, and quickly stashes Jack’s photo away. She smiles and invites the big, smiling galoot in. Dora takes Fallon’s outstretched hand for another hearty shake, and her little hand is tiny in his mighty mitt. Then quite naturally, she puts her other hand on his, then folds herself into his big, loving, waiting arms.

A title card announces "LATER." At first viewing, I thought that this meant about an hour later - or after coitus. But it turns out to be quite a while later - many days or weeks.

Fallon is in the bar again, and he exits into the street. (I have to mention one of the funniest, most inexplicable actions I’ve ever seen in a film here. Down the street, in the background action, a man is pushing another man in what looks like a large wooden wheelbarrow. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he stops, turns and unceremoniously dumps his passenger out into the middle of the road. No one seems to notice or reacts to this bizarre event, and the main foreground action keeps going.)

Fallon exits, and suddenly Dandy Jack comes riding back into town and enters the bar. Suave as ever, in his tux and top hat, Jack stands at the bar, while the others silently, nervously eye him. Finally, one of them attempts to give him the news.

Whether the information is actually delivered is unclear, but Jack suddenly appears at Dora’s door, knocks lightly, then slowly, cautiously, lets himself in. He smiles to Dora, removes his hat, and begins to perambulate about the room as she stands there, fixed, confused and frightened.

Without looking at him, Dora slides to the door, asking Jack to please leave. He simply smiles and shakes his head. He’s come back home and he wants her again. Dora closes the door simply, as if in acquiescence. Pickford’s eyes and slow body motions do all of the acting, as she turns and slowly edges hungrily back towards Jack. Finally, she throws her body into his arms with such amazing gusto that we realize that she has pined for him all along.

As he caresses her however, Jack’s eye spies something on her desk below them. As Dora continues to weep at his shoulder and kiss at his cheek, Jack reaches down to pick up the picture frame which now hold the photograph of Fallon, rather than himself.

Dora confesses (via title card), "He is the man I was engaged to marry before you came back." Jack smiles in defeat and begins to return the picture frame back. A quick cut shows him striding jauntily back into the bar. He announces, "She slammed the door in my face, so I reckon I lose." This blatant lie is Jack’s way of keeping his dignity intact, and he orders drinks all around.

Suddenly one of the men notices the lipstick on Jack’s cheek, and his lie is given away. Everyone gets a hearty laugh out of smooth Jack.

Suddenly Fallon enters the bar from the street and greets Jack with the same lusty frontier enthusiasm he showed him before. We think to ourselves, well, here comes the crisis point. What is going to happen now?

Fallon pumps Jack’s hand, and Jack offers him a drink. Abruptly, Fallon leans forward into Jack’s face, who replies to him, "I reckon she’ll marry you, Fallon, but we’ll still be friends."
The two men exchange another hearty shake and then head back to the bar.

There is suddenly a quick cut to Dora, up alone in her room, quietly looking at the picture in the frame. She sits uneasily in close up for a few moments, then stares intently into the camera. The film abruptly ends.

This is a nice scenario in which Griffith intelligently allows his audience to draw their own moral conclusions. We know that Dora still loves Jack, and he wishes to return to her. But is she going to go through with her marriage to Fallon anyway?

There are no easy answers here. We don’t know the final decision, but it looks as though Dora and Jack will deny their own feelings, that Dora will marry Fallon, and this love tragedy never had to have occurred. Yet, we cannot help but blame Dandy Jack for his cavalier behavior towards Dora earlier in the film. Is his willful surrendering to the good-natured Fallon a gallant gesture on his part - or does Jack recognize that he doesn’t have the earnest stuff that will make Fallon such a good husband for Dora?

Friends is a simple little film that hides enormous human complexities. Griffith is becoming subtler at handling personal relationships, and allowing his actors to express themselves with understated dexterity. The ambiguity of the ending of the film is a nice surprise, and it reveals that this nascent art form is maturing, gradually, into a larger, yet more introspective emotional realm.

An Unseen Enemy

An Unseen Enemy (1912) - The most extraordinary thing about this film is, of course, the screen debut of sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish, two of the most powerful and exciting screen presences of the cinema’s early years - and particularly with Griffith.

From their first moment onscreen, these girls are different - simply radiant brunettes with indescribably expressive eyes. These young women would prove crucial to Griffith’s expanding development of film acting. Already, here in this first picture - Lillian is about 18, Dorothy 14 - the Gish sisters emanate a fluid, wistful naturalness. They both possess uncommon beauty, but it is in their special form of liveliness, a uniquely evocative, definitely sexual power, but residing in a truly human innocence that makes both of them so compelling to watch.

Lillian Gish would go on to be the greater star, but here in the debut, it is younger sister Dorothy who practically steals the film. Her key scenes involve her sad-faced, frustrated boyfriend (Robert Harron) who is about to depart for college, whom she refuses to kiss. Harron, a veteran extra of many Griffith films, really gets the chance to emote mopingly here, and it is no surprise that he will be regularly featured by Griffith until his untimely accidental death in 1920.

What we have here with An Unseen Enemy, is ultimately another "chase to the rescue" movie, and one that would be wholly undistinguished without the appearance of the Gish sisters. They seem to be the actual reason for the film, and the only thing that turns this ordinary action flick into a memorable cinematic experience.

It is interesting to ponder the dialectic between film production and film acting. In a very formal sense, an actor is nothing more than just another visual element in the mise-en-scene of a film. In practice, however, actors are the focus of the narrative threads that tie these films together for the audience. Film makers would soon discover, if they had not already, that it is the actor that is the essential entry point for the viewer, his chief point of reference. Actors, being human beings, are not content to remain purely visual elements on a screen, like on a painter’s canvas, but will emerge from the composition to demand attention to themselves on their own. They are like a new life emerging from a carefully planned construction, and they can (and do) take on a life all their own.

We have seen many actors in film so far by 1912, and many of them, particularly in Griffith’s work, have been excellent. The best (Mary Pickford, John Barrymore) bring a unique presence to their characters without overwhelming the sense of balance in the structure of the film itself. Anyone who has watched a good deal of silent films will be overly familiar with histrionic actors who draw attention to themselves, destroying both formal cinematic balance as well as narrative-driven verisimilitude. Griffith has always been an actor’s director, able to achieve great subtlety in his cast of players.

With the Gish sisters, however, there is something quite magic in the combination of their natural spontaneity, as it seamlessly blends in with the film to help develop a truly new and balanced dynamic between performer and film, which will flourish, especially in the films of Hollywood. In a sense, this combination could be said to create a new kind of hybrid - a union between the theatrical tradition of acting with the film form itself. And the Gish sisters brought a photogenic and psychological naturalism to the screen that Griffith quickly recognized would be a powerful combination.

While it might be going too far to declare that the Gishes invented what would become "the movie star," there is no question that their collaborations with Griffith would help accelerate the development of a new form of "cinematic" acting, rather than theatrical, in which the actors remain just as vivid - although not more so - than the rest of the montage in which they not only appear, but seem to help define.

This is very noticeable in An Unseen Enemy, which would be rather routine without them. We first see the pair, disconsolate orphaned sisters sitting aside one another in the lower right-hand frame of the composition of the opening shot. They are not weeping or wailing, but their sadness is palpable. The first action we see is Lillian’s gentle attempt to lift up her sad sister’s face with a fingertip under her chin. Dorothy simply closes her eyes and shakes her head, very subtly letting her know that any attempts to cheer her are useless.

These gestures are so beautifully natural and unaffected that they tend to draw the viewer’s attention to the girls more than if they had performed anything extraordinarily overtly emotive. Part of the beautiful sympathy between the two has to come from the fact that they are sisters, coming complete with a packaged code of empathy that later players will have to learn. But there is more - in each of the Gishes, similar as they appear here, there is a distinctive personality that resides in each. It is here seen in miniature, but with Griffith’s coaxing, the natural charisma and individuality will emerge.

Of course, it should be noted, that these two young women are among the most stunningly beautiful creatures to ever appear on a screen - before or since. Of course that will remain the fundamental essence of the female movie star right down to the present day. But it is not only beauty - there is an immediate sense of depth of character that positively illuminates each of them. It is that strange, unnamable quality that makes certain individuals so special - that every eye turns to them when they enter a room. There is simply no accounting for this kind of appeal in life, and when it is magnified upon the screen, the effect would soon prove to have a truly mythical impact. For better or for worse, from this moment on, it will be impossible to talk about movies without reference to their stars.

Of course this was already happening - both with Griffith’s actors and others. The point I wish to make is not so much an historically unique one, but rather something that is emblematic of the entire process of the development of movies. Under the tutelage of Griffith, over the next ten years or so, the Gish sisters would emerge as archetypal movie stars that would transcend their films - even transform them into something new. This is all part of the beginning of the phenomenon of the film star - and it is something that is perhaps inevitable given the admixture of the projected image and the unique human character.

Now I am not arguing that D.W. Griffith "invented" this phenomenon any more than many of his other contemporary developments. But just like so many other developments in the language of film, Griffith was the leader extraordinaire, and his example would soon be emulated so widely that it would become de rigeur practice for the entire industry.

To return to An Unseen Enemy, and the remarkable debut performances of Lillian and Dorothy, we go back to the opening shot of the two girls, sitting so plaintively together. Each of them, with their deep, haunting eyes and piles of thick dark hair, seem similar, but they are distinguished quickly by their reactions to one another. Lillian, the older, is wiser and solicitous of her younger sister - but Dorothy simply shrugs off her older sister’s indulgence of her - she is clearly her own person.

The plot, such as it is, has their elder brother (Elmer Booth) arriving with some money from their late father’s estate, which he deposits in a safe in the family home and returns to work on his bicycle. Once he is gone, the "Slattern Maid" (Grace Henderson) calls up her crooked old flame, played with a kind of brutal gusto by Harry Carey, the future western star of the 1920s. Together, they plan to get the money out of the safe.

A third element in the story is introduced by the departing boyfriend of Dorothy. As he arrives to say goodbye, he takes the girl away from her sister, alone into the corn field. Dorothy’s downcast eyes and snappy rebuke of a proffered kiss lend her an aura of girlish mystique, and when she offers her beau a handshake instead, older and wiser Lillian looks on disapprovingly. She knows it is wrong to leave the poor boy hanging, and her body language tells it all. Dorothy’s deep looks as she departs from the young man for the last time gives her away, and we have the whole story. Dorothy is the coquette, the little game player that would rather make herself the center of attention rather than to give herself away. Lillian is straightforward and empathetic, and she is perplexed and annoyed at her little sister’s childish behavior.

What is remarkable is that these characters are so quickly and roundly formed in just a few moments, by just a few looks and exchanges. Griffith has found two naturals here - perfect for cinema acting. Each of them can communicate volumes in a very brief space and minimum exertion. It is the subtlety that is extraordinary, and subtlety, largely delivered, will become perhaps cinema’s most valuable commodity.

Meanwhile, when the danger arrives, it is Lillian who first recognizes it, taking it quite seriously, while Dorothy initially responds as if it were all a joke. Lillian has to quickly correct her attitude with a hand gesture that alters her sister instantly. It is wonderful to watch their interplay.

The key link in the film is the discovery of a whole in the wall between the kitchen containing the safe and the bedroom into which the girls have been locked inside. As Lillian calls for help from her brother, the maid threatens the girls with the barrel of a pistol protruding through the hole. (Griffith uses one of his strongest close ups to date to establish this threat, and it is quite notable as a malevolent presence.) While all the suspense is being set up, the chief joy of the film is in watching the contrasting reactions of the terrified girls, as Dorothy plucks up the courage to return to the phone, as Lillian hangs in the background, helplessly horrified for the both of them.
As the maid begins drunkenly firing the pistol into the room, both terrified girls huddle together in a corner, their eyes flashing a kind of madness of frenzy - a true and powerful vision of innocence suddenly and violently violated.

Meanwhile, Brother and his boss commandeer a car, and we have the usual jump-cut rescue sequence that Griffith (and others) have already mastered countless times. (This one includes a kind of pivoting bridge that must be forced back into position, thus making the audience gasp even longer.)

We return to the girls’ room, and once again find it is Dorothy who makes the wide-eyed attempt to approach the gun - perhaps to grab it away - only to have it fire right in front of her face, causing her to collapse in fear.

Now, older sister Lillian becomes protective, and glaring at the horrific weapon, shields her sister with her own body. In doing so, she reasserts her primacy, both in intelligence and experience. We are led through these sisters into a world where real people, identifiable characters, like ourselves, can be seen to act in meaningfully distinctive ways in extraordinary circumstances. This will become part of the basic grammar of commercial cinema.

Watching the rest of the people in the film, one becomes aware that they are not bad actors - they are all quite good, actually. By this point, Griffith had definitely developed a method of directing actors who would be natural in front of the camera. It is just that the Gish sisters deliver a little something more - something perhaps undefinable. It is a unique charisma that is especially suited for the screen. Call it "star power" if you will. It is somehow, the ability to be larger than the movie in which you inhabit - something that requires the movie to grow with you or to be seen as ill-fitting and outmoded (as this one does).

It is the arrival of actors such as the Gish sisters that would, perhaps as much as anything, spur the creation of such a vast canvas as The Birth of a Nation, where both of them would play such large roles within a canvas where their cinematic power could be contained properly.

At the final shot of the film, both Lillian and the Brother force Dorothy to finally accept a kiss from her boyfriend - who has just saved their lives by getting them out of the deadly house. Lillian’s delighted face as Harron kisses the cheek of the reluctant, eye-squinting Dorothy is marvelously charming. Dorothy’s multi-meaning, character-revealing, eye-rolling look afterwards is sheer transcendence. Who suspected that one look could communicate so much!