Works, By Date: 1910-1919 (231)

Total: 382 works

1911 (12)

Sidney Street Siege

A newsreel of the state response to the challenge of a couple of anarchists in 1911 London that fought off the combined force of police and military. Was the inspiration for the shootout in the final scene of Hitchcock's 1934 "The Man Who Knew Too Much".

In The Hands Of Impostors (Den hvide slavehandels sidste offer)

Oddly, the impostors' ruse starts with a primitive hit-or-miss con act repeatedly performed in full public view - yet we are to believe that this silly stunt fronts an elaborate well-tuned network. While the patsy is still in the clutches of the con woman, a masher also swoops down on her - and she again falls victim to yet another persistent motor-mouth. Not long after she steps into the hands of the impostors, the film breaks down in hopeless confusion. The impostors (who remain unnamed, just referred to as “the impostors”) phone the blackmailer (misnamed “Mr. Bright”), who quickly has his hands all over the patsy. Meanwhile, the persistent masher (aptly named “Engineer Faith”) catches on to the flimflam and leaps on his White Knight horse. But before he arrives, another blackmailer (mysteriously named “Lord X”) muscles in on Mr. Bright and nabs the patsy - which leads Mr. Bright to counter by paying to have her kidnapped from Lord X. Meanwhile, amidst this torrent of cock brawls, no one has turned a dime of profit off the patsy - nor has anyone revealed any plans to cash in. This seems to be merely a confusing tale of a town desperately in need of new nooky. Still, the patsy - and the movie - is saved by a delightfully daring cock-buster.

Let this serve as a lesson for solo travellers, showing how personal information shared with strangers can be used harmfully - i.e. as a plot for a time-wasting movie.

Most interesting was the train station exit scene, which shows passers-by gawking at the camera and performers - a quaint record of the days before mobile digital devices, when people actually paid attention to their surroundings.

L'Inferno

Dante journeys into the afterlife, where obsessive completists who wasted their lives watching every silent movie available, then posting faux-witticisms, now are condemned to spend all eternity watching "L'Inferno".

The Musketeers of Pig Alley

Rival gangs exchange mean mugs and bullets, leading to an enigmatic ending. Free of the more aggressively manipulative Griffith conventions (e.g., damsel in distress, race to rescue), instead focusing on atmosphere and character (Elmer Booth's wonderful portrayal), makes this seem less dated than other Griffith works.

The Water-Funker (La peur de l'eau)

Max's romance is derailed by a challenge to his fear of water. Only two comic moments: this first one at 9 minutes. The final comic moment (at 13 minutes) is Max in his best manic form. It's even more impressive because it is preceded by a chillingly grim portrayal of broken-hearted depression: like a cinematic display of manic-depression.

Dr Brian Pellie and the Secret Dispatch

This is the final 2 minutes of the 10-minute video described at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1114609/synopsis.html. It features a reenactment of the 1909 Tottenham chase, that began with a robbery by anarchists, set in a fictional tale of spies.

Love Me, Love My Cat (Max n'aime pas les chats)

Max loves Jane, but Jane loves her pussy - and it's driving Max mad. Too long, but hang in there til the end...

How Men Propose

Disappointing. No laughs, but at least it's short.

Rastus Among The Zulus

Surprise - no actors in blackface here! When Rastus falls asleep, racial violence lurks as a trio armed with sticks sneak up on him. Then Rastus does the Atlantic slave trade in rewind: he is forced on a ship and ends up in Africa. No surprise that he ends up in a cannibal stewpot (even though Zulus were the only Africans that Europeans explicitly declared to be not only not cannibals, but fiercely anti-cannibalism - despite causing the famines that led to cannibalism. But you didn't expect a Rastus - aka 'coon' - flick to be historically accurate, did you?). Rastus' abduction and forced labor on the route of the slave trade ends with him being beaten by a cop. Could there be a hidden message here?

The Aryan/La fiera domada

The title raised the excited hope of going beyond the usual stereotyping and slurs, instead delivering an explicit exposition of racial ideology - taking Birth Of A Nation out west. Unfortunately, this is just an incomplete reconstruction of a film considered lost until 2008. The introduction states that this version comes from an Argentine mid-1920s rerelease (dates within the film are given as 1923), with titles that “differ quite a bit from the original”. Most segments have not been digitally restored, and lost segments are replaced by photographs.

The original may have been more directly concerned with racial ideology, but here Cowboy's main conflict is with women: Cowboy is massively Madonna–whore complexed. This is immediately suggested in the very first scene, where Cowboy's sacred love for his distant mother is juxtaposed with images of him petting and kissing his bestial companion. Then after he deludes himself that a sleazy mining camp on the border is his ideal “town inhabited by men of iron heart”, and that his mother would love a girl he met in a bar there, he is of course vamped. But instead of dumping her, he takes her as his whore he loves to hate, as he does a No-More-Mister-Nice-Guy. Finally, he meets The Virgin Mary Jane and he again falls to his delusions as she cons him into believing his White Man's Duty is to give away his riches. He leaves behind his whore to return to his Brotherhood and replay the Heroic Defender role that first got him vamped, before riding off in the sunset to seek his next imagined Madonna to transform into an imagined whore. So goes the life of an iron-hearted Aryan.

Where Are My Children?

“All intelligent people know that birth control is a subject of serious public interest. Newspapers, magazines and books have treated different phases of this question. Can a subject thus dealt with on the printed page be denied careful dramatization on the motion picture screen?...In producing this picture the intention is to place a serious drama before adult audiences...”

This somber introduction is immediately followed by:

“Behind the great portals of Eternity, the souls of little children waited to be born.”

And on it goes like this, shifting between pretense of weighty social drama and wallowing in cabbage-patch airy-fairy fantasy, linked by hackneyed melodrama and annoying overuse of cross-cutting, while hammering its messages - abortion is murder, humanity's salvation is birth control (for the poor), becoming a submissive baby factory is the duty of every woman (if she's wealthy) - only approaching realism in its wonderfully dark and depressing ending. Movie in a nutshell: Living with a pompous, self-righteous, hypocritical Dickless Attorney leaves wife with no desire to breed more of his kind. There - 65 minutes saved.

Anime buie

Yet another installment in Ghione's spaghetti Western series, For a Few Sheep More, documenting the untold story of the contribution of Italian immigration to Texas' early twentieth century boom in sheep ranching. Biggest mystery: how Za La Mort managed to say goodbye to his hometown's flashy shoes.

The Curse of Quon Gwon

Featuring rich costumes and the conflict between tradition and modernism (a theme that, 10-20 years later, would become a staple of the Shanghai film industry), it's a pity so little remains of this.