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).