Viewing Single Post From: The Griffith Project

Viewing Single Post From: The Griffith Project
panzer the great & terrible	Jun 29 2009, 10:12 PM
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,323 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	Now we start Volume 2, and I'd like to tell you we hit a high note right away, but alas, no, we begin with a total stinker: 1.) The Joneses Have Amateur Theatricals. My Mama said if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, so I will say Florence Lawrence plays Mrs. Jones, and I once had a cat named Mrs. Jones. Florence is a better actress than my cat was. An amateur theater group comes over to the Joneses house, and all kind of stuff goes on, but then Mr. Jones throws them out. Yawn. Nice print though. 2.) A Politician's Love Story. Mack Sennett plays the lead again. I wish he wouldn't. No wonder I bogged down the first time, this is torture. He's a politician and he gets his panties in a wad because of a caricature of him in the paper that's all hat, so he goes to the paper to shoot the artist, as in with a pistol, but finds that it's a pretty girl, so he goes to the park and picks up another pretty girl and that's the story. Jesus. 3.) Have I mentioned we're in 1909 now? A hundred years ago, just think, and my Dad was 15 (He was 50 when I was born, I'm not that old.). The film is "The Golden Louis," and I suspect somebody was reading Dumas. It's Carnival time in Paris, cold and snowy unlike New Wallins. A little girl is fixed up to look pitiful by her parents, to beg, but after begging for about a minute falls asleep in the snow. While she's unconscious, a rich guy (Owen Moore, looking like the star he will be) lays a golden Louis at her feet, but she sleeps on. This other guy (Charles Inslee) is losing at pool, so he goes out and what does he see but the golden Louis? He does a lot of conscience stuff but takes it, goes back to the pool hall and wins. He wants to give the little girl her share. Been a pretty fair story so far, but now she gets up and starts wandering around for no reason, just so he can't find her -- tedious -- then goes back to the same place and dies of the cold -- and NOW he finds her. Oh heck. What's cool about these tragic endings is they aren't emphasized. You just get the AB (American Biograph) logo and that's it. No 'The End' or anything. Sometimes, this time, it's like a slap in the face. Another cool thing is that in many shots you see the AB logo on the wall somewhere to prevent the 1909 version of video piracy. Anyway, I enjoyed this little picture, thank God. I was running out of steam. It will be more fun when Mary Pickford arrives and there is real screen acting at last. All we've seen so far are those big, arms-held-wide gestures that reek of the old-fashioned stage and seem so archaic now (kinda cute though when a girl does 'em). INTERMISSION I've forgotten to mention one thing. Griffith didn't just direct these, he wrote 'em, or most of 'em. Well, I say wrote but really he did it all in his head, even complex masterpieces like INTOLERANCE. So when you call him an auteur you're right: he is the author in every sense, unlike many directors. Others who had a significant hand in shaping their own screenplays, for better or worse, include Von Stroheim, Hawks, Ford, Von Sternberg, Welles, Preston Sturges, Hitchcock, Wilder, Aldrich, Kubrick, Huston, Fuller and Tashlin -- plus of course Jerry Lewis (one reason why the French love him). Those who didn't write include Wyler, Wellman, George Stevens, Lean and Carol Reed, all darlings of the critical Establishment, plus some dodos like deMille, Fank Lloyd, and hell, the list is endless. I would suspect Stanley Kramer belongs in the first group, but have no first-hand knowledge except that he produced his own movies. Perhaps Preminger worked on his scripts too; that would explain how his career went all to Hell, because when these writer-directors burn out they stay burnt. OK, then -- back to Griffith. 4.) At the Alter (re-sic) -- Jealousy, Italian style. This Sicilian family is having dinner; a violinist comes in to propose to their daughter, who accepts, and there is great rejoicing, except from this one guy who wanted her himself. So what he does is rig up a pistol that will shoot the couple as they kneel at the altar -- would you have thought that up? -- goes home, drinks poison and has a spazz attack that forever defines how silly silent movie acting can be. So he's dead, a girl discovers the body, gets a cop, the cop finds a note about the rigged-up pistol and runs like hell to get to the church, but you know, falls down a lot and like that: we wonder if he's going to make it but he does and the couple is saved, thank goodness. Straightforward storytelling with at least one shot too long (the dinner at the beginning) and the aforementioned acting, plus it's a dupe from a print with sprocket damage. I hope MOMA's print is better. 5.) Lure of the Gown -- A cool little movie but unfortunately another one that jumps up and down, I don't have enough tech Knowledge to know why, I said sprocket damage up there but I have no way of knowing if the Biographs even had sprocket holes. It's one of those "comeuppance" stories and I like it. Unfortunately the print I saw was soft. This is the first really good one -- has a satisfying ending. 6.) The Voice of the Violin -- This fella is a violin teacher, and in love with a girl student, but she tells him her father would never consider an engagement to a poor musician. He gets mad and becomes a Communist. At a meeting, the Communists draw lots to see which two will go on a dangerous mission. You know what? He's one of the winners. And that ain't all, the job is to blow up a rich man's house. They get there and guess whose house it is? Imagine the rest -- you'll probably get it right. Probably the best-made one yet, but what a plot! Print soft, but no jumps. 7.) A Drunkard's Reformation, released April Fool's Day, 1909, is an absurd movie whether you drink or not, especially since Griffith was knockin' 'em back pretty good. The hero, the actor who was teaching violin two weeks before, is now a scary, abusive drunk. He wakes up hung over and his little girl asks him to take her to the theater, she has tickets. He goes, and its a play about the evils of drink. He sees himself in the play's protagonist and vows to quit. That's all, folks. The cameraman was Bitzer and every shot is dark, but the titles look great. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this, but I don't know what. 8.) Confidence. Florence Lawrence returns as an orphan girl who works for a crooked gambler. She warns two marks that he's using a crooked deck, he fires her and she vows to go straight. She goes to New Yawk and becomes a nurse, a "respectable working girl." A doctor marries her, so she's got it made, except the slimy gambler happens to see her coming out of her house and blackmails her first for money, then the second time he calls he takes her jewels, including the wedding ring. He leaves his cigar behind and the husband finds it. The next time he calls, the husband appears and throws him out of the house. He had Confidence in his wife. I liked this, Lawrence is a pretty good actress by now, but the soundtrack Grapevine used was appallingly corny, standard melodrama fodder. Every cliché in the book. 9.) Lucky Jim. Supposed to be a comedy. The hero, Lucky Jim, is in love with this awful girl but she marries another guy --- she abuses him and then he dies. So Jim gets her, with results you could imagine, but why bother? Jumpy, soft print, terrible movie. Apparently abusive wives used to be hilarious before women had the vote, but we can only marvel at that these days. 10.) Resurrection. Tolstoi in one reel; something I might have tried to do back then so I can sympathize, but what we have is a soft, contrasty print without the original titles -- impossible to follow. Something about a person unjustly imprisoned who accepts her fate, I guess. Crazy stuff, poorly done. 11.) The Cricket on the Hearth. Forgotten Dickens novella about a miser engaged to a girl who loves another, and how his heart is melted at Christmas a la Scrooge. The limitations of the form defeat the project. Half the film is spent setting up the premise, and after that there isn't even time for the cricket of the title. If you haven't read the book, the whole thing is mystifying. I guess there was a certain prestige in even attempting such a thing, but the thing itself has no entertainment value. 12.) Next up, the final film in this volume, What Drink Did, dedicated to Mr. Ratzywatzky. A father takes his first drink at lunch, and is pounding them from the get-go. He comes home totally wasted. The next night he goes to the bar again, his little girl comes to fetch him home, and she gets shot: so he learns a bitter lesson, how to overact. I kid Mr. Griffith, but this film shows progress in storytelling -- what is needed is more skilled acting, and that will soon arrive in the form of Miss Mary Pickford. Volume three will include the first famous Biograph, The Lonely Villa, so we are getting somewhere, I hope. Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Jul 10 2009, 09:14 AM.
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