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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