Works featuring "family" (77)

Buy Your Own Cherries

A short morality tale on redemption through temperance, skillfully structured and executed.

The Moonshiner

Remember the last time you saw a movie in tribute to a heroic family man (and his gun-totin' wife) who made a clean living producing and selling illegal recreational drugs, until killed in a police raid? Well, if you missed that one, just turn your clock back to pre-Hollywood, and dig this sympathetic look at one of America's outlaw folk heroes (featuring an MMA-style fight scene!)

Revenge!

This revenge is not so sweet - quite nasty, in fact - showing that producers learned early that exploiting human fascination with viewing violence can be profitable.

1904 seems to have been the year that the fledgling film industry made an important but unheralded discovery: audiences also like to root for outlaws - even when they know those outlaws are doomed to fail.

Just look at Revenge, and compare it with another crime film by the same director, released just ten months earlier: The Pickpocket. Although the titles might lead one to believe The Pickpocket is a character study while Revenge is not, actually neither reveals anything about the protagonist.

But although both begin with commission of the crime that sets off the action, nothing in the portayal of the pickpocket garners audience sympathy for the outlaw or his crime. On the other hand, the protagonist of Revenge is shown committing his crime as a victim of betrayal, his life ripped apart by those in power and authority. Finally, the film industry had tapped into an archetype that cinema audiences never seem to tire of identifying with: the protagonist who feels wronged by the powers that be, so sets out for to make things right by slaughtering everything in sight.

She Would Be An Actress

Intense drama unfolds when wife must choose between the two greatest joys in her life: dancing on stage, and whacking her hubby upside the head. What will she choose: the glamour of stage life, or the fulfillment of pummeling Papa?

Before his Alexander's Ragtime Band shot him to fame, a 20-year-old Irving Berlin penned a modest success in 1909, that included lyrics on the same theme: Sadie Cohen left her happy home//To become an actress lady
On the stage she soon became the rage//As the only real Salomy baby
When she came to town, her sweetheart Mose//Brought for her around a pretty rose
But he got an awful fright//When his Sadie came to sight//He stood up and yelled with all his might: [Refrain:] Don't do that dance, I tell you Sadie//That's not a bus'ness for a lady!
'Most ev'rybody knows//That I'm your loving Mose//Oy, Oy, Oy, Oy//Where is your clothes?...
Oy! such a sad disgrace//No one looks in your face
Sadie Salome, go home

Also, note the original “slap stick” the comic uses, just before she goes on stage.

Drunkard's Child

Smelly old geezer flashes fat cash to lure a young boy. Then, when boy's mom croaks, he seizes the opportunity to bumrush dad from his own house and snatch the boy. Finally, dad gets snuffed out when geezer's crony pumps lead into dad's back, and authorities bestow blessings on the snatch&snuff - with no one once bothering to ask the kid what he would like. Stats: in this under-7 minutes short, the serial flasher flashes his wallet 3 times. Good clean family fun film.

An Unexpected Guest

From Lubin ad:

A young doctor had a love affair with one of the hospital nurses. Through machinations of his father the young doctor is made to believe that the nurse has given him up...

From The Moving Picture World (August 28, 1909) review:

A Lubin which seems to be somewhat uncalled for...The photography is good and to a certain extent the picture may interest those who are thoughtless, but there is a certain degree of delicacy which should be observed about such matters that is plainly violated here. The picture serves no useful purpose. It is not instructive and cannot be called entertaining. The reason for its existence is not plain and the silent drama would be improved if the picture was never shown again.

So here it is, shown again, over 100 years later, still of interest to the thoughtless.

Goof: Though we see the unexpected guest two years after its conception was hinted at, making it at least 15 months old, it appears to be still an infant!