Viewing Single Post From: The Griffith Project

Viewing Single Post From: The Griffith Project
panzer the great & terrible	Jul 13 2009, 01:50 PM
Mouth Breather Posts: 10,356 Group: Members Member #13 Joined: September 3, 2005	Reprint of my Previous Griffith posts at the Serial Squadron: Somebody was rash enough to ask me to review this massive set (The Kino Griffith box) a few years ago, and now I am egomaniac enough to try it. First a word about Griffith. He was a Kentuckian in an era when having unreconstructed pro-Southern views about the Civil War had quite recently emerged from criminality. Americans have always pitied underdogs and losers, and New York City always had a strong pro-South leaning (vide the draft riots), and minstrel shows & novels began pushing the Old South mythology, painting the South as a fount of gracious living. This stuff quickly got out of hand, as falsehoods will. A number of virulently racist pro-Southern novels and plays appeared, and among the worst were two novels and a fabulously successful play by a clergyman named Thomas W. Dixon: The Klansman, The Leopard's Spots, and the Clansman. In choosing these as the raw material for Birth of a Nation, Griffith branded himself as hopelessly archaic to say the least. He is routinely derided in film classes today -- academics have quite rightly pushed the pendulum in the other direction -- maybe a little too far, but that's the way it is with pendulums and with academics. Griffith is also the one who invented good movies. His ability to pick out the little detail that gives a scene its point has never been surpassed. Most of the people who set the bar for film acting started by working with him, and he made the first movie masterpieces. Many revered directors are those who learned from him: two obvious examples are Hitchcock and Kurosawa. The first box in this set is called Biograph Shorts, Special Edition. It adds eight shorts to the previous Biograph twofer collection, while shunting a few Civil War-themed ones off to the Birth of a Nation Box. Let's do the first disc and take 'em one by one: DISC ONE: THOSE AWFUL HATS (1909): This is kinda like those "let's All Go to the Lobby" things, only it's about ladies taking off their hats. The ladies who refuse get lifted out of the auditorium by a crane. I saw this in a real theater with a real audience a few years ago and the people laughed. THE SEALED ROOM (1909) is the worst Griffith picture I have seen. Based on Poe, a little, and playing up Griffith's apparent fear of suffocation, it's stagy and dull. Jealous husband walls up his wife and her lover, they suffocate and emote. CORNER IN WHEAT (1909) I would nominate as the movies' first masterpiece. Gorgeous photography and strange parallel editing. It's about the evil folk who run the commodities market and how they will get buried under a mountain of wheat (suffocation again), while the simple farmers continue to sow the soil and keep the world going. This one I have seen dozens of times. At first I didn't much like it, but it grows on me. My assessment today: great. Towering masterpiece. 4 1/2 stars. THE UNCHANGING SEA (1910) is even better; in fact, my favorite pre-1912 film by anybody. It's the 'Bitter Green' story, the girl who waits for her husband who went off to sea and never sent word, but she waits and waits because he is just so cool. When he does come back, he's lost his memory, and all that, but wait til you see the photography and editing. Great. HIS TRUST (1911) is about a Southern slave who takes pity when his owner's wife loses her marbles and everything else when her house gets burned by Yankees: he takes her in. That is the entire plot. There is no sexual issue, and the wife's insanity is stark. A real oddity, and not likely to win many friends with the PC crowd, but such things actually did happen -- I know of a famous case iun Beaufort, S.C. The intense performances are remarkable. For some reason, the rest of this film is on the BIRTH OF A NATION DVD, but this is the first half of what became the first American two-reeler when exhibitors insisted on showing the two films together. In THE NEW YORK HAT (1912) Mary Pickford is light years ahead of other actors of the period. She invented modern acting, and here you see her doing it. Lionel Barrymore is present too, walking around like real people. Evil gossips try to sabotage a girl and a preacher: Mary Pickford & Lionel Barrymore -- now there's an odd couple... Good one. Anita Loos wrote the script when just a girl. AN UNSEEN ENEMY (1912) is revered among old movie scholars as an early manifestation of the switchback, last minute rescue, but I've always thought it was kinda silly, and you'll know why when you see it. Sort of like The Invisible Monster in a way. Well edited though, & some lovely location work. Griffith was always at his best outdoors. THE MOTHERING HEART (1913) is about a young wife bamboozled by her idiot husband who finally sees the error of his ways after their baby dies. Does that sound bad? Well it ain't because the young wife is Lillian Gish, who has watched what Pickford is up to and absorbed it all, and then adds little touches of her own in an extraordinary performance, and there is also cross-cutting between neglected wife at home to husband out on a spree among the Apache dancers, more interesting than the crosscutting of Unseen Enemy. THE ADVENTURES OF DOLLIE (1908) is the first of the Biographs new to DVD. It happens to be the first picture Griffith directed, reconstructed from frame-by-frame photos deposited in the Library of Congress. You can tell what's happening, but that doesn't make you care. Very primitive, of historic interest only. THE USURER (1910) seems to have been made for the folks who liked CORNER IN WHEAT. It's kinda left wing-sh, and so artful as to be almost arty, but still it's my second favorite pre-1912 Biograph. It keeps repeating the same point, by cutting back and forth between the champagne party the usurer is holding to the misery his business practices are causing, but for some reason that just keeps getting more and more abstract and interesting. Maybe it hits home because these days the usurer's name is Mr. Insurance. Anyway, (spoiler!) he gets locked in the bank vault with all the money, and ya know what? He suffocates. Think we're catching a theme here? But let me tell you, it isn't the theme that's interesting, it's the intensity Griffith brings to it. There is no more intense director, not even Fritz Lang. ENOCH ARDEN was Griffith's first two-reeler to be officially released as such, a prestige product based on Tennyson, whose reputation was at its peak at this time, just after Queen Victoria's death. It's the old story about the guy who wins the girl away from a rival who looks a bit like Elvis, and they get married and have three kids (one of 'em a baby you never see) and he goes off in a ship that wrecks and gets washed up on a desert island. About twenty years later he returns to find the wife remarried to the rival (the kids, now somehow reduced to two, are crazy about the rival, so Enoch slinks off so that "she will never know," and instantly dies. After his marooning the fellow who plays Enoch abandons any attempt at modern acting, throws his hands over his head and lets his eyes bug out to express emotion. I thought I'd better warn you. Other than that, a nifty little drama with gorgeous location shots and one really nice two-shot when Enoch is about to leave home, before he forgot how to act normally. THE MISER'S HEART is interesting particularly to serial fans. It gets you involved with two different good-bad guys, a thief and a miser, and then opposes them to two bad-bad guys, burglars so bad that they tie a rope around a little girl's waist and dangle her out of a window at the end of a rope, and then hold a candle under the rope to persuade the miser to give them the combination to the safe with his hoard in it. I can't tell you more without serious spoilers, but I can say that there is a lot more to it, and you may even get involved, especially since the piano accompaniment is able. A satisfying silent movie recreation and a fitting end to the first disc of this astounding collection. FIRST DISC: 188 minutes, no extras, 5 stars out of 5. Such a deal! SECOND DISC: THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY is often cited as "the first gangster film." It uses the word gangster and shows a skirmish in a gang war. It has Lillian Gish, fine urban locations, and too much plot. A musician leaves Gish alone to go make money. While he's gone a hood tries to date her. She goes out to a "gangster's ball" and takes up with the head of another gang, and then the boyfriend comes back but outside Lillian's very door gets bapped by the hood, who steals his money. Well, then, never mind why, there's a gang war, and while that goes on our musician steals his wallet back from the hood, and goes back to Lillian's room, they hug and kiss, and then the hood comes in, escaping from the cops, and asks Lillian out. She refuses because she likes the musician. The hood, amazed, leaves and is arrested just outside the door. Takes the cop into Lillian's room and Lillian and the musician alibi the hood. I told you it was too much plot. Gorgeous print, gorgeous photography, and some signs of modern editing. Miles ahead of what the French were doing two years later. THE BURGLAR'S DILEMMA (1912) starts with a title that says it will explode "the fallacy of circumstantial evidence." Lionel Barrymore (before his wheelchair days) is a genial, wealthy "householder," and Henry B. Walthall is his "weakling" brother. Three young ladies (including the Gishes) come to pay Barrymore a birthday visit, then some guys with mustaches arrive, and frivolity and toasting ensues, which incites Walthall's jealousy. The guests leave, the butler goes out for the evening, Barrymore and Walthall sit up drinking, Walthall gets loaded, borrows money from his brother and then cold-cocks him. A title reads: "In his drunken confusion, the weakling thinks he has killed his brother." "A young burglar (Robert Harron) under the domination of an older crook (Walter Long)" comes in the window and Walthall hides. Seeing this as a chance to blame the killing on somebody else, he locks Harron in with the body. When Harron finds Barrymore on the floor, he tries to rob him. There's an extraordinary "Griffith moment" as Harron's hand dances over the body like a spider looking for the wallet. You know how the plot comes out, and the last confrontation between the two brothers is beautifully done. The film's chief interest is Barrymore. He's far more modern than anyone else. Walthall, especially, acts in a stagy (though expressive) style that he himself abandoned and Sennett lampooned shortly thereafter. There is all manner of cross-cutting between Walthall and the young burglar throughout, making no particular point except to show simultaneous events. Griffith still announces the action in a title, and then shows what he has already announced -- but subtleties are beginning to creep in. Bitzer's compositions are at times daring, with the action often at the far edges of the frame. I'd call it a transitional film, with flashes of inspiration, showing Griffith's mature Biograph style developing but not yet complete. THE SUNBEAM (1912) is a drama of tenement life, somewhat like a Victorian ballad in its sentimentality and bizarre ellipses. A little girl's mother dies, and a lonesome couple unites to raise the kid. The couple are a severe spinster and a gruff, beefy middle-aged man, both pictured realistically. This isn't as awful as it sounds, though the plot is oddly abrupt. The little girl, despite terminal cuteness and a tendency to stare at the director, has her moments. Griffith no longer uses titles announcing the coming action, and tells the story in images. Things have begun to gel. In retrospect, it seems that 1912 was his miracle year. (and incidentally, Tservo is absolutely right, a huge amount of this film is set in stairwells and hallways, something I had never noticed before he mentioned it. Surely there was some economy consideration, at least at first, as well as the fact that stairwells were where people first met in the tenements, but then it could be that Griffith developed a superstition about his more successful films having stairwell scenes. Too late, alas, to ask him. Isn't it sad that nobody was able to break through his shell and get a real interview?) THE PAINTED LADY presents a problem to the reviewer because if you tell anything about the plot you spoil it. I will say it gives the beautiful Blanche Sweet a chance to do everything but play the musical saw. There are some strange editing choices, titles placed before the action, but again there's modernity in the playing. Not bad at all. ONE IS BUSINESS, THE OTHER, CRIME has a title that tells the whole plot, but I won't tell more. Blanche Sweet, as the rich wife, may be somewhat overshadowed by Dorothy Bernard as the poor wife -- but this little movie is all about the photographer, Billy Bitzer. One by one you could pull the shots off the screen, frame them, and hang them on the wall. Alas, the physical film itself has shrunk over the years and the preservation of this title must have required lots of work, but we're lucky somebody thought it was worth the effort. DEATH'S MARATHON is a grim little item about how Walthall kills himself because of his gambling debts while his friend Lionel Barrymore and his wife Blanche Sweet try to save him. But they're too late, and when they find him he as just done the deed, and a little wisp of smoke is curling out of his mouth. Haunting image. This short is very, very Griffith, and a huge storytelling advance from all we've seen before, with only one explanatory title. With THE BATTLE OF ELDERBRUSH GULCH we get the epic sweep we associate with Griffith, still tied to the small-scale detail that was his greatest strength. A 30 minute running time, so we have a, what do you call it? Half-feature? Lillian Gish protects her puppy dogs as the savages attack. The switchback, last-minute-rescue come to full flower, and the movies are born. Wonderful theater organ accompaniment by Gabriel Heatter. Five star masterpiece. Now we get to the new stuff, four Biographs that haven't been available to the general public for , oh, nearly a century. Jon Mirsalis' piano scores for them are impeccable. THE LAST DROP OF WATER (1911) is legendary, and lives up to its reputation. It's sort of a Bret Harte picture, and does evoke the Old West. Biograph spent some money on period wagons, costumes, and a big bunch of attacking Indians. Epic sweep, and a fine piano accompaniment. Amazingly good for 1911, it throws some doubt on my earlier observations about 1912. FRIENDS (1912) is a Mary Pickford vehicle, with Walthall, Harry Carey and Lionel Barrymore (alas, Carey is just there for a few moments), and it's in poor shape, with missing footage, not enough to totally obscure the story, but it does hurt. We're in the gold fields. Mary loves Walthall, but the gold's played out so he abandons her to go North. Barrymore shows up and she takes up with him. It's a little hard to figure, but Barrymore & Walthall run into each other and turns out they are old buds, so when Walthall comes back to Pickford & finds Barrymore's picture there, he tries to do the noble thing and split, but then Barrymore comes back & does the even nobler thing by saying no, you can have her. Problem is, this happens while Mary is offscreen. Not the best Biograph ever, with some vile acting by extras. THE LESSER EVIL is a sea picture. Mae Marsh is a "humble fishermaiden" who gets kidnapped by smugglers. Once they have her at sea, they want to smuggle her, ho ho, except one of them protects her. So those two are barricaded in the cabin of the smuggle-boat (a sailboat) while the bad guys are trying to, ahem, break down the door. Well, in the meantime her boyfriend, a simple fisherman, has alerted the coast guard, so he sets out with them in a little bitty motor launch which overtakes the sailboat in no time and those eight good guys easily overcome about 20 bad guys. So. In all the confusion, Mae makes sure her protector gets away by occupying her boyfriend, who is, as I mentioned, a simple fisherman. A really good one. THE MASSACRE at last. All my life I've heard about it, and finally see it at the age of 60. It's about this lady who has two boyfriends, and she marries one and has a baby with him, but it's the other one who saves her life. And oh yes, it's also about the whites slaughtering the Indians, so the Indians just about have to take revenge, and do. it's also about Billy Bitzer taking astonishing close-ups and even more astonishing long shots. A flat out masterpiece: proof, if any was needed, that Griffith really was and still is the great American director. Shameless exploitation of a cute baby to heighten the suspense. 188 minutes of sheer enlightenment on one DVD. An incomparable bargain. After I finish the other Biograph thread I have to write about The Birth of a Nation, a great movie that nobody could rationally defend. The Good Lord only knows what I'll say. I'll make a new thread for it, starting with the Biograph shorts included in the box. Please, folks, if this movie offends you -- and there's no reason why it shouldn't -- let's don't get in a rock fight. I didn't invent the old South, and I have never done a heckin' thing to keep it alive, so do me a favor and blame it on the Bossa Nova, OK?
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