The Mothering Heart (1913)

A crazed Lillian Gish

Here's another D.W. Griffith film (this one clocking in at just over 23 minutes).  Lillian Gish plays a young woman who, against her better judgment, agrees to marry her boyfriend. After struggling to make ends meet, the man finally gains some success and takes his wife to a nightclub.  She is out of place in high society, but he manages to attract the attentions of another "idle woman."  The husband soon begins an affair with this woman and when his now pregnant wife finds out, she leaves him for her mother's house.  Ultimately, the wife begins raising the child on her own and the husband's concubine attracts the attentions of another man.  Seeing the error of his ways, the husband tries to reconcile.  But is it already too late for their marriage and... the baby?

All right, I'll admit it. This one felt like a chore. The story was just never terribly engaging. The entire relationship between the unnamed husband and wife just never really clicked, so his philandering does not come as a shock.

A couple of real positives are on display here, first and foremost being Gish's performance. This is the first performance I have seen in this marathon that is off-kilter.  I'm talking Gary Oldman in The Professional off-kilter.  Nicolas Cage in... well, everything, off-kilter.  When the wife discovers the other woman's scarf in her husband's coat pocket, she smiles, frowns, laughs and becomes angry over the course of seconds.  At the end of the film as she wanders through her rose garden, she looked (to me) exactly like Michelle Pfeiffer's crazed Selina Kyle in Batman Returns.

The most remarkable thing to share however is the ending. SPOILERS FOLLOW!  A title card appears on the screen saying "The baby ill."  That statement is like describing the great flood from the Bible as a slight drizzle.  The doctor comes to the house, dotes over the child for a minute and the baby dies.  The woman loses it and the husband, who had just seen his child presumably for the first time moments ago, mourns by the cradle. After destroying the rose bushes she so carefully tended during the movie, the wife reenters the house and is about to kick her husband out when she notices the baby's pacifier juxtaposed against his wedding ring.  As the movie ends they appear to reconcile in that moment.

Because of the inherent shortness of the piece, nothing about this ending feels earned.  The baby is on-screen for mere moments before you find out the baby died.  The husband is generally a jerk throughout and there is no evidence he's changed at all.  The wife has spent entire movie being put upon, has her baby taken from her and is rewarded with the moron that she spent the movie escaping from.

Technically, the movie feels both overly long (with repeated shots of the goings-on at the nightclub) and compressed (I could not for the life of me explain passage of time in this movie).  He does more referencing of earlier scenes than I've seen before, most notably when the husband first attracts the idle woman's attention and then later has the situation very precisely reversed in both action and staging. 

I love my Griffith, but beyond Gish's kooky performance which is great, this is one of the lesser works I've seen from the director.

Watched on YouTube
Picture from MoMA

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The Bangville Police (1913)

Things do not go well for this police car.

Here's a fun short that serves as my introduction to the Keystone Cops!  The first Keystone Cops short was produced one year earlier, but this one is considered to bethe first classic Cops film.

A maid encounters burglars in her barn and runs to call the police chief.  Awakened in his bed, the chief alerts the rest of the cops by firing off his gun.  The cops race on foot and by ineffective vehicle to save the girl.  Will they catch the bad guys...or a calf?

There's not much to say here.  For it's time, the editing is pretty quick and there are certainly hijinks, but there is nothing here that will be unfamiliar to a modern audience.  The most shocking thing to me was the characters randomly pointing guns in inadvisable directions and firing.  However, it's a Keystone Cops movie so there is never a sense of danger.

Only recommended for the diehards and others looking to kill about seven minutes.

Watched on Google Videos

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Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913)

An example of Bauer's dramatic use of lighting

My first 1913 film is a real discovery for me.  Twilight of a Woman's Soul is the first film by Evgeni Bauer, a Russian filmmaker whose film career was cut short when, in 1917, he broke his leg and suffered medical complications leading to his death from pneumonia.

The story itself will strike modern audiences schooled in traditional movie plots as ridiculous.  A young, beautiful, rich woman named Vera finds herself lonely in her estate, even when surrounded by her wealthy friends.  When her mother takes her to help with the poor, she feels she has found her calling.  However, Maxim, the first man she attempts to help, rapes her.  As Maxim passes out drunk, Vera seizes the opportunity and kills him with a knife.  Later, she meets a handsome prince who falls in love with her, but will her secret tear them apart?

The astounding thing for me in this movie is the lighting.  There are repeated shots where the background is well-lit, but the foreground is in shadow and the movement of actors between the spaces tells you everything you need to know about their mood.  Bauer also creates sets that create transparent barriers between Vera and her upper-crust life, showing how lonely she is. Bauer is doing all of the heavy lifting to establish mood; the acting serves merely as a punctuation mark.

Technically, the movie also features a great, but subtle forward tracking shot, a well done special effectthat provides a ghost-like quality to the poor people in Vera's dream and a shot where the prince is momentarily replaced by the hideous man she killed through clever editing.  The director cuts from both the rape and the murder before they occu, leaving the events to the viewer's imagination.  It is hard to believe it is Bauer's first film.

As I said above, modern film lovers will have a really hard time with this plot.  Essentially, it paints this young woman as completely naive and hiding her secrets.  The poor are shown as liars and cheats who quickly turn their gambling table into a dining room table when the rich woman shows up to help.  In an early attempt to reveal her secret to the prince, Vera only points out that she was with another man, not that she kills him (presumably because a lower class death really didn't matter).  The prince finally learns the secret and forces her to leave.  He later regrets the decision and attempts to find her, but it is too late.  The movie saves all of its pity for the prince, not the victim of a rape and certainly not any of the lower class characters.

Still, the technical skill and the use of lighting and sets to tell the story make this a signpost for me in my cinematic journey.  I would have loved to have seen Bauer's growth in the 1920's.

Watched on DVD from Netflix.  48 minutes.
Photo from Observations on Film Art

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1913: Hooray for Hollywood!

A couple of notes before talking about 1913:

First, I'm only three years into this, and I am already completely hooked on these movies.  I am particularly fascinated watching D.W. Griffith essentially writing the rulebook for every director of the past century.  I've watched The Musketeers of Pig Alley three times and The Lonedale Operator twice.  I imagine there will be a Griffith movie on my list for each year just so I can continue to watch the progression of this amazing talent.  Which leads to...

Second, I am for the first time finding myself looking ahead anxiously to 1915 and Birth of a Nation, followed of course by Intolerance in 1916.  Birth of a Nation is intensely controversial, but also incredibly influential, so I am really being tempted to sprint for the next two years to get to my first real checkpoint. 

Now, 1913...

The center of the American film-making universe begins to shift from the east coast of the U.S. to the west and a newly-christened "Hollywood."  Of course, 1913 also gave us the first true film example of "sex sells" as Traffic in Souls is released.  According to IMDB, it follows a woman and her police officer boyfriend as they try to uncover a prostitution ring.  It was the most expensive film made to date, costing $57,000 (take that James Cameron!), but made $450,000.

Speaking of Cameron, 1913 saw the release of a film about an ocean liner sinking with spectacular special effects that became a worldwide phenomenon.  I am of course talking about the Danish film, Atlantis.  Guess you cannot go back to that well too many times.


As for movie firsts, 1913 featured the first custard pie in the face gag (A Noise from the Deep), the first feature length Western (Arizona), and the first movie featuring an all-Native American cast (Hiawatha).

What am I looking forward to watching this year?  Twilight of a Woman's Soul by the Russian director Evgeni Bauer is definitely on the list.  Bauer's life was tragically cut short by pneumonia after only four years of making films.  Griffith made dozens of movies this year, so at least on of his (not sure which yet).  Traffic in Souls is available from Netflix so I may watch that as well.  I'm sure there will be other surprises along the way.

Sources: filmsite.org, IMDB

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The New York Hat (1912)

Time to close out 1912 with a rather slight tale from D.W. Griffith, The New York Hat.  When a mother in a small town dies, she leaves money to the local pastor to buy her daughter all of the fine things she never could own. The pastor notices the girl admiring a fine, but expensive, hat from the big city and buys it for her.  Soon, the town gossips are speculating as to why their pastor would be purchasing such a gift for the beautiful young woman.  Can the pastor and the woman avoid the scandal?

Okay, as I said above, it is a slight tale.  The story itself attempts to be very dramatic, but (and it may be my modern sensibilities), it's just a hat.  In true sitcom fashion, the story hinges on characters postponing the conversations that provide the easy and obvious resolution.  The act that sets the drama of the story in motion shows a real naivete on the part of the pastor as he never stops to consider what a shop full of patrons might think of man of the cloth buying a woman's hat.

The positive I really find worth highlighting here is the acting. Griffith allows Mary Pickford room to act in the lead role and she does a remarkable job.  Her sadness as she pantomimes wearing the hat of her dreams is palpable despite the absence of soundand her joy and trepidation at receiving the gift are very well-conveyed.The movie features Pickford before she became the first real Hollywood celebrity.  It also showcases a young Lionel Barrymore, who hails from my hometown of Philadelphia and will go on to become one of the biggest stars of the 1920s.

So long 1912!

Random fact speculation:  Do not know this for certain, but the girl's apartment appears to be the same apartment from The Musketeers of Pig Alley, which would be the first reused set I have noticed.

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Algie, the Miner (1912)

Algie, the Miner was directed and produced by Alice Guy, who is regarded as the first female filmmaker in history.  The film follows an effeminate New Yorker who must travel to the West and prove himself a man in order to win the heart of his beloved.  In his travels, he confronts some rugged cowboys and saves his firend from would-be robbers.  But will it be enough to convince his girlfriend's father he's a changed man?

Algie is the first movie to feature a "gay" character in the lead role.  He likes his lace handkerchiefs, packs a comically small gun and kisses cowboys upon greeting them.  I was cringing at the start because of how they were playing the stereotypical gay character for laughs.  However, as the film moves forward, the relationship between Algie and his cowboy mentor becomes much more complex.

Algie ultimately trades in his tiny pistol for a six-shooter and saves his teacher Big Jim from bandits. However, he also comforts Jim through an illness and helps him overcome alcoholism.  By the end, when Algie heads back east, Jim hangs his head in sadness and decides to travel with Algie.  The subtext of the scenes is striking, considering it would take almost 100 years to get to Brokeback Mountain.

Technically, the movie is pretty simple. The opening and closing have a good deal of humor in them, though the middle segment is very dramatic.  All of the tonal shifts are handled really well.  The camera doesn't do anything remarkable and the film doesn't feature any effects work, but none of that was necessary to tell this story.

As far as movie tropes, there some very stereotypical behavior from Algie, playing the type of character who was relatively common in films of this time.  Other tropes include bad guys with facial hair and a couple of mine prospector characters who look like they are directly from central casting.

As I said above, I was pleasantly surprised by the nuance of the movie.  Algie learns from his experiences in the West, but it doesn't completely change him and Jim ends up learning more from Algie than vice versa.  Very well done.

Watched on YouTube.

Picture from tinypic.com

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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912)

So far I've been out of luck finding any available feature films from 1912 from Netflix or other sources.  Instead, here's another early genre film.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the earliest film adaptation of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson tale.  The movie is directed by Lucius Henderson and stars James Cruze in the dual role of Jekyll and Hyde.

The film opens with Jekyll drinking the formula that turns him into Hyde.  After a few moments, he takes another liquid that transforms him back.  Over the next few months, he falls in love with the minister's daughter, but he has also lost control of his transformations into his alter ego.  Can he find a cure before he destroys the lives of all those around him?

This is not a great movie. Unlike other versions I'm familiar with, Mr. Hyde here is basically an out-of-control chimpanzee.  You know he's a bad guy because he throws things around in the lab and knocks a little girl over in the street.  There's one moment of violence, but the movie never really gives Hyde the sense of menace he needs (and at an eight minute running time, never has much chance).

The only thing I thought was really done in the movie was the initial transformation.  While the camera trick they use is fairly obvious, it's very effectively done.  It is also clear that the movie industry is learning from its successes as this is much better than The Wizard of Oz from just two years earlier.

Watching this feels like a bit of a step back from the other films I've seen.  I'm curious to see how other fimmakers continue to fair against the likes of D.W. Griffith and Thomas Ince moving forward.

Available for free on YouTube.

Random film fact: In certain scenes, an actor named Harry Benham portrays Hyde in an uncredited appearance.

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The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)

Here's another by legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith.  The Musketeers of Pig Alley is the earliest example of a gangster film and features Lillian Gish in one of her first screen roles.  The film follows a musician and his fiancee as they struggle in New York City.  The musician leaves in order to make some money.  While he is away, the young woman meets the Snapper Kid, head of a gang in the slum.  The musician returns a richer man, only to have his wallet taken by the Snapper Kid.  After the death of the girl's mother, a friend takes her to a ball with the gangsters.  The girl is almost drugged by a rival gangster when the Snapper Kid intervenes.  The argument over the girl erupts into a battle in Pig Alley.  Will the Snapper Kid survive and elude the cops?  Can the musician get his money back?

Of the films I've watched so far, this is easily the most violent.  The gun battle is quick, but gives you a sense of the brutality of it despite the lack of sound.  Griffith continues to prove his mastery of both shooting and editing film. There's one shot in particular where the Snapper Kid walks into a full close-up of his face which provides a great sense of mood.  The film creates a great atmosphere with the Snapper Kid's cigarette smoke wafting into the frame in certain scenes before you even know he is there.

Some more movie tropes are on display.  Obviously, the Snapper Kid is about as stereotypically a gangster as you could expect. He cocks his hat in his first appearance and the hat stays exactly in place for the remainder of the movie.  This is essentially every gangster you've seen in the first half of the 1900s, including James Cagney.  Although her appearance is brief, the woman's friend who shows up to take her mind off her mother's death exists in just about every romantic comedy of the last 30 years.  And of course, the musician to demonstrate his lack of cash, reaches into his pocket and pulls it completely out.

I liked this film, though not as much as Griffith's previous work.  There was a lot going on over the course of 17 minutes, but I thought the pace really slowed leading up to the gun battle.  The short shoot-out was well done and the ending has some great pantomime by the actors, particularly the gangster, that made me laugh out loud.

Watched on YouTube
Image from Some Came Running

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1912: Birth of a Studio (or Three)

Time to leave 1911 and jump ahead to 1912.  The theme in this year is the birth of a lot of things we all take for granted today.  IMP and other studios merge to form Universal Pictures Company.  That's right: the studio that brought you Jaws, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future and E.T. got its start in 1912.  Paramount's precursor, the Famous Players Film Company, and the Fox Film Foundation are founded this year as well.  And notably, the Technicolor Company forms to start development of early color film.

Beyond the studios, some simple innovations occur.  Thomas Ince gains prominence for developing shooting scripts and production budgets, both unheard of at the time.  Fanboys get their start with Photoplay, the first magazine devoted to film.  Oliver Twist becomes the first feature-length U.S.-produced movie shown in its entirety.  Two films based on the sinking of the Titanic appear in theaters mere months after the disaster.  Moviegoers also get their first gangster film (D.W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley).

So what am I looking forward to this month?  I need to check availability, but I want to track down Richard III, the oldest surviving feature length U.S. film.  Quo Vadis? is considered one of the first successful feature films so that will likely be on the list. I am also trying to make a point of following Griffith and Ince moving forward, so films from them will likely be on the list.

Picture from Magazine Art.org

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L'Inferno (1911)

Today's movie marks a shift in a lot of ways. It's the first feature length presentation I've reviewed, clocking in at 67 minutes (not a lot by today's standards but more than the 13 minutes I've been averaging).  I watched it on DVD and not a computer monitor which added a lot to the experience.  It also featured modern music as the film was restored and scored ith music by Tangerine Dream, a German electronic group.

L'Inferno is based on the Divine Comedy by Dante and was directed by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe de Liguoro.  The film follows Dante as he is led through the rings of hell by Virgil.  The film took over three years to complete and was the first feature film to be shown in its entirety in the U.S.

The movie is on the whole great for its time, though modern audiences will find it a bit slow. The special effects were amazing for the time period with very detailed costumes and some great camera tricks.  This is also the first film I watched where production design was really notable.  The sets and locations used really evoke a gothic mood and are very effective at making the viewer feel like the leads are descending into hell.  The movie stacked with extras as the denizens of hell which gives you a sense of Hell being endless.

The film has some effects that stand up today.  When Dante and Virgil encounter the cardinal sinners blown by winds, a combination of effects including some stop motion gives a real sense of the vastness of hell. The effects used to create Lucifer are also very effective (saying more would spoil it).  Other effects, while amazing for the time do not hold up so well (Cerebus, I'm looking in your direction).

The film is well done, but moves very slowly.  It manages to be simultaneously very literal and very impressionistic.  The general format of the movie is to show us text describing a scene and then act out exactly that scene.  Repeat.  Because the movie is basically following two characters who are witnessing evenets and not really interacting with anyone, you never have any real sense of danger. It's more of a travelogue than a drama.

Finally, I have to say that Tangerine Dream's modern score made me want to take ice picks to my ears. It almost never synched with what was happening on the screen and the vocals were really distracting.

Final word is that this is a good movie for people with an interest in film history or early special effects, but is otherwise a monotonous undertaking.

DVD rented from Netflix.

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Random 1911 Movie Thought...

A movie titled "Friday the 13th" came out in 1911.  I'm going to go ahead an assume that this was not a turn of the century slasher movie about coeds at a summer camp.

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Little Nemo (1911)

Now for a touch of the surreal.

This movie is an adaptation of a weekly comic strip created by Winsor McCay that ran from 1905 to 1914.  The strip was a journey into the dreams of a young boy named Nemo.  Through his sleep, he was trying to reach Slumberland to play with the daughter of King Morpheus.  This strips would end with Nemo awakened from his dream, usually because of some terrifying event taking place in his subconscious.

The movie of course takes this fantastical world and does its own meta take on it. The basic plot is that McCay boasts he will create 4000 images from his strip and create an animated movie, an idea that is mocked by his friends.  The rest of the movie follows a comedic interpretation of McCay's attempts to bring his strip to life.

The plot of the movie is slight and not terribly interesting.  McCay ends up contending with bumbling assistants and a ridiculous amount of paper.  Modern audiences will know exactly how this is going to end.  Also, after discussing some fun movie tropes with The Lonedale Operator, here we get the equivalent of the money bag with the '$' sign on it as laborers bring in barrels and boxes that helpfully labeled 'INK' and 'DRAWING PAPER'.

That said, this movie has two things to recommend it.  First, throughout the film there are shots of McCay drawing his elaborate creations freehand. It really is amazing to watch his hand move over the paper and see these strange characters come to life.

Second, the animated feature at the end is very surreal.  We've seen a lot of this type of imagery before, but his work still felt completely fresh and in a strange way even contemporary.  And it is in COLOR.  Yes, I am seeing my first colors on screen much earlier than I ever thought.

In the end, the movie served to make me more interested in seeking out Little Nemo comic strips.  The idea of the fantasy world he created on paper sounds more fascinating than the slight diversion the film represents.  But the animation is amazing.

Watched on YouTube.

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The Lonedale Operator (1911)

It's been over a week, but we are back with what seems to my eyes a leap forward for cinema, The Lonedale Operator.  The film is about a telegraph operator at a train station who uses her wits to outsmart a couple of would-be robbers.

This movie is another directed by D.W. Griffith and continues to show his mastery of the medium.  It is a great example of using any number of techniques that we take completely for granted today.  Jump cuts, changing camera angles within the same scene and most notably a close-up which is essential to the story all are on display here.  The close-up (watch and you'll see it) was amongst the first in movies and certainly the most notable to date.


Watching The Lonedale Operator after the previous movies makes me feel like an anthropologist unearthing the people responsible for inventing the language of cinema.  Beyond the technical accomplishments, there are a ton of movie tropes crammed into this short film.  You see the plucky heroine (who is also a damsel in distress), the hero racing against time, bad guys with facial hair.

For modern audiences this will be nothing more than a curiosity. For cinephiles, this is an envelope pushing accomplishment from the man who will ultimately introduce the feature length film as a commercially viable property (1915's controversial Birth of a Nation).

Viewed at VodPod (warning: no sound at all with this one).

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