A Fool There Was (1915)

The vamp with a fool

A successful business man leaves his family in New York to accept a diplomatic post in Europe.  During the trip across the ocean, he encounters a "vampire" woman, who forces men to fall in love with her and then leaves them.  Her former lovers fall into destitution and may even kill themselves.  Can he escape the the thrall of this vamp or will he succumb like all the others?

A Fool There Was is a decent melodrama but poorly executed.  The only reason to watch the movie is for Theda Bara's "vamp" character.  Bara created cinema's first femme fatale and became a sex symbol as a result of this film. 

The husband played by Edward Jose, is a model of silent-era overacting. As he falls further under the vamp's power, he becomes an alcoholic and you know that because the second he touches a drink, he can't stand up and plasters a goofy smile on his face.

The husband's wife and friends make several attempts to save the "fool" from the vamp.  The movie does not go with a happy ending here, which was a surprise and nicely done.

This movie, like Griffith's work, cuts between scenes in different locations, but does so less successfully.  It also chooses odd places to cut the action.  Sometimes this is intentional (the scene changes at a moment of violence for example), but other times seems inexplicable.  During one scene, the husband's friends resolve to follow his wife to make sure she doesn't do anything rash.  They follow her out to the street and... cue a "The next day" title card. Why were they following her?  Where'd they go?  Don't know.

This movie famously features a "scandalous title card as Bara's "vamp" says "Kiss me, my fool!" to one of her former lovers.  We know this is shocking because every reference to the movie on the web says so, a fact that would be lost on modern audiences.

A Fool There Was is another one for film history buffs, but the story is not that interesting, it is poorly paced and is notable only for Bara's performance.  The shots and cuts are so random at times that it feels like someone's home movies. All of the films of this era seem dated, but this one even more so.

Watched on DVD from Netflix
Photo from The Constant Viewer

Read More

D.W. Griffith: Propaganda and Birth

A jury of his peers?

I already posted a brief review of The Birth of a Nation here.  However, the supposed "importance" of the film is worth a longer look.

For those who don't know, Birth is considered a crowning technical achievement in film, while also being amongst the most racist frames of celluloid ever produced.  I do not think you can separate the cinematic achievements from the story it serves.  Others feel differently.

Much critical attention is focused on the depiction of blacks in the latter half of the film.  However, Griffith begins building his argument much earlier in the film. 

The narrative of the film follows two families, representing the North and South.  The Northern family (The Stonemans, led by a congressman from Pennsylvania) visits their Southern friends (the Camerons) in Piedmont, South Carolina prior to the start of the Civil War.  Early in the film, Griffith depicts the slaves here as generally satisfied with their lot in life, even spontaneously breaking into a dance for the amusement of the guests.  The seeds of a romance between the eldest sons and daughters of the respective families.

Then the war comes.  Griffith sets his principal argument in a simple title card: "The power of the sovereign states, established when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the individual colonies in 1781, is threatened by the new administration."  Everything would be okay if President Abraham Lincoln did not want to infringe on states' rights.


Both families' sons join their respective armies.  Even here, great care is taken to lionize the South. The troops have a ball to celebrate their early victories in the war.  They even carry in the Confederate flag from Bull Run and honor it.  The troops assemble with pomp and circumstance not shown in the North.


The youngest sons of each family meet on the battlefield and are killed.  The Camerons are selling every one of their possessions in order to support the war effort and the eldest Stoneman daughter Elsie is working in a military hospital for the North.  Sherman's march to Atlanta is depicted in red tint as though a literal hell on earth.  Women and children cower in fright.  The Cameron's Piedmont home is overrun by black Union troops. 


The eldest boys from the families meet in battle.  Ben Cameron (known for the rest of the film as the "little Colonel") leads his men over three Northern encampments before being wounded and captured.  Ben is shown as the courageous leader, overcoming the odds and even stopping to tend to an enemy soldier to the rousing approval of the enemy troops.  Ben is a leader.  He is honorable.  Contrast that with Phil Stoneman who sits in his trench attacking from a distance.


The North wins the war.  Griffith takes great care to point out he is attempting a historically accurate reenactment of the surrender. This is critical to the film's arguments later.  Ben is to be tried as a war criminal, but a subtle change happens with President Lincoln as a character.  Ben's mother pleads with the President to spare his life.  He acquiesces and Ben is saved, showing Lincoln's compassion for the South.  The man earlier described as the destroyer of state sovereignty is now cast as its greatest hope.

Representative Stoneman wants to grind the South under the North's boot heel.  Lincoln wants to take a more conciliatory approach, to Stoneman's dismay.

Lincoln is killed in what was my favorite sequence in the movie.  There is real drama as the moment approaches in Ford's theater.  Griffith again takes care in a title card to point out the historic accuracy he is attempting in his portrayal of the event.

The contrast in reactions from the Cameron and Stoneman clans is striking.  The South laments the loss of their friend and worries for the future.  Stoneman sees only his own ascension into power.

Stoneman uses the opportunity to anoint a mulatto named Silas Lynch as his political protege.  Any time Lynch is in a room with Elsie Stoneman, his lustful gaze becomes fixed on her.  He can't help himself; he's a half breed after all.  His lust gets the better of him.

Stoneman conspires to make Lynch the Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina.  The racism of the movie picks up tremendous steam here.  The blacks are seen on election day stuffing the ballot box and preventing the honorable white men like Dr. Cameron from casting a vote.

Then, in the most ridiculous scene in the whole move, Griffith introduces us to the newly elected state legislure through a title card that imbues the same historical accuracy on the scene as he did for the South's surrender and Lincoln's assassination.  If those were true accounts, so too must his portrayal of a black legislature.

And what does this portrayal of the legislature in session look like?  One of the black legislators sneaks a drink from a flask hidden in his desk. Another kicks off his shoes and props his bare feet on his desk as a colleague eating fried chicken looks on.  The legislature decides that its members should wear shoes so the barefoot man places his shoes back on his feet. the legislature then passes a law allowing interracial marriage. Immediately after that, they all look lustfully at the white women in the gallery.  Griffith has torn away any subtlety and revealed his true agenda: dehumanizing blacks and sowing fear amongst whites.

The Little Colonel is lost and frustrated.  Then, he sees some black children frightened by white children dressed as ghosts.  An idea hatches in Ben's head and the KKK is born.

After some scenes depicting the conflict between Lynch and the KKK, the next critical scene in the film unspools.  Gus, a lustful black man, follows the young Flora Cameron as she goes off to get water.  She runs from him and is chased to the top of a mountain.  Rather than succumb to Gus, she leaps to her death, her honor and innocence intact.  The Little Colonel witnesses the tragedy and cradles his sister as she lay dying.

The Klan rallies to find Gus and they try him (i.e., they drag him into a field and Ben identifies him as the killer.  Gus is killed and deposited on Lynch's doorstep.

Now, as we head toward the climax, two different storylines proceed to solidify Griffith's conclusions.  First, the Cameron's are fleeing the black soldiers loyal to Lynch.  They seek refuge in a cabin owned by two former Union soldiers. The soldiers protect the Camerons and even fight the black oppressors.  No subtlety here.  The Union soldiers act as proxies for the North, implying the apparent mistake they made in freeing the blacks.

Second, Lynch ends up alone with Elsie under his power. He proposes to her and she reacts in horror.  He vows to wed her anyway.  Then Elsie's father shows up. The eldest Stoneman at first approves Lynch's desire to marry a white woman, but the reaction turns to disgust when Lynch reveals he wishes to marry Elsie.  Of course, the Klan shows up to save the Stonemans after the leader of the emancipation movement realizes the error of his ways.

The final frames provide an icing on this cake of racist propaganda.  The blacks leave their homes to vote in the next election and the KKK is there on horseback, threatening them.  In a moment played for laughs, the blacks retreat back into their homes. Then we see the marriage of the eldest sons of each family to the daughter in the other family.  Ultimately, Jesus shows up to bless the entire affair. Seriously.  I am not making this up.  Jesus Christ is shown on film giving this all a big thumbs up.

So, the movie is basically this: Southern shown as honorable men and war heroes, blacks shown as threatening their way of life and killing innocence in the South (represented by Flora), the Klan is formed and saves the country.  At every turn, Griffith makes a choice to glorify the actions of the South and demonize those of the North and the blacks.  A simple example: as Ben courts Elsie, she immediately becomes smitten.  Phil on the other hand, is met with distrust by Margaret Cameron until the Klan triumphs at the end.  Even in the little details, Griffith is making the argument.

This is a propaganda film sold as entertainment at the time.  Yes, this sentiment existed then and sadly does today, but it was not the only viewpoint.  This movie was banned in several cities and severely edited in others.  To simply dismiss it as a product of its time is wrong.

If you are interested in propaganda film-making, here's a great example.  If you are interested in movies as entertainment?  Move along, nothing to see here.

Picture from Old School Reviews

Read More

The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Yeah!  The KKK is here to save us!

Hailed as one of the first true masterpieces, The Birth of a Nation combines all of the techniques we have seen in D.W. Griffith's previous work to tell the story of America through the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction.  The film has an epic scope (187 minutes) that incorporates cross-cutting shots, close-ups, camera tints and dolly shots to tell the tale.  The civil war battle scenes and Lincoln's assassination are particularly remarkable.

I hated this film.

Many praise this film as a masterpiece. In rushing to extol the film's virtues, critics perform an intellectually dishonest trick.  They separate the technical achievement of the film from the story it tells, discounting the point of the film in favor of discussions about camera work.

Think about that for a moment.  How many of us walk out of a theater today thinking, "That was the most offensive film ever screened, but the camera work was amazing!"?  We don't.  Because you cannot separate technique from the story it serves.

What is the film about?  It's a three-hour recruitment video for the Ku Klux Klan.  It's a propaganda film that recasts the North's entry into war to free the slaves as a misguided mistake that can only be rectified by whites forming their own army.  I'll deal with the film as propaganda in a separate article.

The basic story is of a southern man who fights valiantly in the war only to see his town and government overrun by blacks.  He creates his own southern army of whites dressed as ghosts to fight back against the encroachment of the former slaves on his life. The man (and his family and friends) find themselves at the center of a number of historical events throughout the running time of the movie.

There are certainly elements of the film to be admired.  I cannot remember seeing Lincoln's assassination on film, let alone at this level of detail and drama.  The war scenes are remarkable with the camera seeming to film from miles away, capturing the full scope of the battlefields.  Griffith here uses close-ups, iris shots and camera movements in ways that bring the audience into the plight of the characters. 

That makes the crimes of the story here worse. It's really well done, but it's a really well done racist portrayal of blacks.  It's not just propaganda, but very effective propaganda.  Blacks are filled with lust for white women.  They cheat to win elections.  They abuse their power and enter the hallowed halls of the state house barefoot, drinking and eating fried chicken.  Seriously.

Bringing Griffith's talent and vision to this tale is like Michaelangelo focusing his artistry on celebrating Goliath instead of David.  Griffith is the most influential moviemaker of his time with the biggest budget and a great cast and he chooses to share his admiration for the KKK.


I knew about the controversy with this film, but I was not prepared for how over-the-top racist this is.  I was expecting some subtlety.  There is none. This is three hours making an argument for a cause that is morally reprehensible.

Unless you are a film historian, I cannot recommend this.

Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly
Picture from Entertainment Weekly

Read More

The Cheat (1915)

Fannie Ward's crazed sort-of heroine

The Cheat is another early film directed by Cecil B. DeMille.  A socialite woman has to spend and spend to keep up with her friends. Her husband cuts her off, but she hatches a plan to "borrow" money from her charity to play the stock market and make a quick buck.  Predictably, the plan goes awry and she is forced to take money from a Burmese businessman to replace the stolen cash.  But what will he want in return?  Can she ever pay off her debt?

I approached this one as a filler movie.  The only virtue it held as far as I knew was that it was available through Netflix Watch Instantly.

Of course, going in with no expectations, I ended up really enjoying it.

It has some issues, but there are two things in the film that kept me hooked.  First, DeMille's camera work is fantastic for its time.  In order to focus the audience's attention at an area of the screen, other directors used "iris shots," which blacked out all but a circular portion of the screen.  DeMille uses lighting here to accomplish the same effect.  It's the first time I have seen this in my movie watching from this era and the impact was striking.

Second, Sessue Hayakawa's portrayal of Haka Arakau brings a completely different style of acting that really grounds his performance as the central villain of the piece.  With subtle movements and glances, Hayakawa exudes menace and lust.  His charisma demands the audience's attention whenever he is on screen.  His style serves as a stark counterpoint to the over-the-top facial contortions that Fannie Ward brings to the Edith Hardy character.

It's a good thing too that Hayakawa is so good here as the ultimate message of the film is very racist in its portrayal of Asians and whites' reactions to them.  It would have been entirely possible for Arakau to be a caricature, but Hayakawa makes him feel like a fully fleshed out person. 

That said, The Cheat still demonstrates a racism that was prevalent in its time.  In exchange for the loan, Arakau demands Edith become his mistress. When her husband comes into some money, she tries to pay off the debt, but Arakau will have none of it. He becomes infuriated and, in the most violent scene I have seen in a film from the early 1900s, he attacks her and literally brands her as his property.

Edith quickly turns the tables and shoots Arakau.  Edith's husband finds the wounded man, deduces what had happened and takes the blame for his wife's actions.  As he is found guilty, Edith comes clean and shows the brand she received.  The crowd in the courtroom, incensed by the actions of Arakau, attempt to attack and lynch him.

The overall story arc here is pretty unsatisfying.  Edith is portrayed as selfish throughout the movie and her husband is a chump she plays like a fiddle.  When the plot resolves at the end, it's hard to muster up sympathy for her.  She stole money, agreed to become a mistress and attempted to kill a man, yet there is no consequence for any of her actions.

Despite the problems with the plot and themes, I would recommend this for DeMille's camera workand especially Hayakawa's amazing presence.  To think, 42 years later he would be nominated for an Oscar for Bridge on the River Kwai.

Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly
Picture from The Dancing Image

Random fact: The movie's villain was originally Japanese in the 1915 release.  This led to protests about the film's racism toward the Japanese.  When it was rereleased in 1918, the villain became Burmese.  Which goes to show, Burma needs a better lobbying organization.

Read More

The Tramp (1915)

The birth of an icon

The Tramp is a Charlie Chaplin short featuring his iconic tramp character.  Charlie walking penniless down a dusty road, saves a young woman from three evil hobos.  In gratitude, the woman's father gives him a job on his farm.  Eventually, the evil hobos return looking to rob the farm.  Will Charlie save the day?  And will he get the girl?

Okay, NOW I get it.

The first Chaplin movie I watched, Kid Auto Races at Venice, was basically one gag repeated over and over again.  The saving grace of that movie was its brevity.

Here Chaplin gives us a character.  The tramp is someone who can't help but do the right thing.  He's Bugs Bunny and the rest of us are Elmer Fudd.  He's going to get away no matter what.  And he's going to have fun doing it.

The comedy in this is nothing remarkable for a modern audience.  It's very slapstick.  Chaplin does exactly what you expect when he picks up a pitchfork or a mallet.  The timing of the comedy was very good and despite knowing what beats the film was going to hit, I found myself laughing.  What the cast does with som bags of flour and a ladder is great.

I have not been tracking, but I believe this is my first film without title cards.  The movie is completely dependent on Chaplin's physicality and he does not disappoint.

SPOILER! I can't leave the review without mentioning the last shot. Everything you need to know about the Tramp get explained in about ten seconds.  After stepping aside at the end of the movie so the daughter can be with her boyfriend, a depressed Chaplin walks down the same dusty road he started on.  He pauses for a second, then suddenly breaks into a joyful dance.  Beyond being iconic, the moment shows the audience this is someone who can shrug off even the saddest circumstances with a smile.  I know the character evolves in later movies.  I cannot wait to experience it.

Watched on YouTube
Picture from philposner.com

Read More

1915: Birth of an Industry

Let's leave behind 1914 (which truth be told was somewhat of a disappointment) and move to 1915. On the face of it, this is a year of masterpieces.  First and foremost is of course D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation.  Hailed for its technical achievements but controversial for its positive depiction of the Ku Klux Klan, Birth is the first movie I have been chomping at the bit to get to.  It's available on NetFlix Watch Instantly, so this will definitely be on my review list.


Beyond Birth, AMC's Film Site recognizes The Tramp as Chaplin's first masterpiece.  I'll try to track that down.  Theda Bara became one of the first "sex symbols" in A Fool There Was.  And Lois Weber served as actress, director, writer and producer in The Hypocrites, a controversial film for its nudity.

Technically, a lot of innovations this year.  The first camera that allowed for close-ups without picking the whole thing up and moving it was used.  Thomas Ince created an assembly line system for producing movies that cut down on costs (as well as creativity).

Finally, a couple of important court cases get decided in 1915.  First, Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company was declared an illegal monopoly.  When the film industry was getting its start, Edison used his patents on camera equipment to control every aspect of film making and distribution.  After this case, Edison's company was broken up and all of the component studios except one almost immediately folded.

Second,the Supreme Court upheld the right of states to censor movies.  I discussed the censorship issue previously, but this is the decision that would lead to decades of oversight.


So what are we watching?  Birth of a Nation obviously and The Tramp if I can find it.  Cecil B. DeMille's The Cheat is available on Netflix Watch Instantly so that seems likely.  Beyond that, I'm sure there will be a couple of surprises.

On a personal note, doing 100 years of movies leads to some easy mat so I can say I am officially 5% done!  I expect my pace will slow as we enter into the feature film era, but I am enjoying the experience so far.

Picture from iGuide

Read More