The Musketeers of Pig Alley

Musketeers of Pig Alley, The (1912)

*** (out of 4)

D.W. Griffith film, which is considered to be the first gangster movie ever made. Griffith does a nice job showing off poor people back in the day and seeing NYC in 1912 is another added bonus. The performance by Dorothy Gish is very good and the supporting players are nice as well. The shootout in the alley remains exciting to this day.

Highly entertaining early film.

Also check out Regeneration (1915).

This is available through Kino, Image and Grapevine.

The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) : Brief Review -

Griffith sows an Unbelievable idea of Goodwill in One of the First Gangster Film Ever Made in Cinema World. Largely known as The First (or one of the first) Gangster film Ever made, The Musketeers of Pig Alley is still very exciting even without long runtime and heroic/villainous dialogues. I have seen lots of Crime/Gangster dramas till date and have always wondered why there was no film made ever made which could have used goodwill for the sake gangster's character to give him a deserving chance? At last, i found my catch here. The idea i have been looking for was already sown by Genius Griffith way before audience started loving crime dramas i.e post 1930s. A young wife and her musician husband live in poverty in a New York City tenement. The husband's job requires him to go away for for a number of days. On his return, he is robbed by the neighborhood gangster. A highly predictable drama (for today's time i mean) follows the rest of the narrative and the allegorical climax of 'deserving chance' ends this film on a high note. As it states, "One good turn deserves another" and "Links in the System", you can't stop clapping for Griffith here. I couldn't stop gushing over Lillian Gish, as she looked so Cute (in every film she looked cute, damn!). Walter Miller was good at his part but the gangsters leader Elmer Booth literal took my breath away with his ferocious looks and attitude. Overall, The Musketeers of Pig Alley is a great watch to learn many sensible ethics that were never used in any Gangster film. I wish somebody had the same brain as Griffiths to make similar intellectual drama in talkies era. Don't miss this another fantastic film of Griffith.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest

If you have ever wondered where Jimmy Cagney got some of his mannerisms, watch this film.

Elmer Booth and Harry Carey, early in the movie, portray two New York gangsters so much in the same way Cagney would 20 years later that you almost don't need any other reason to watch "Musketeers."

Watch Carey, playing an un-named character, hitch up his pants. Just great!

This is available in a poor print at YouTube, but watching it there -- or trying to -- will either irritate you or, I hope, drive you to find a good copy to own.

I saw this many years ago in a Griffith retrospective in Los Angeles, and have been in awe of it ever since.

Like so much Mr. Griffith did, it just set the standard for great film-making.

In what may be the first mob film DW Griffith establishes some of the genre nuances that remain staples to this day. The Musketeers of Pig Alley is a tense action filled study in nostalge de la boule, father of The Roaring Twenties grandfather of Mean Streets.

A struggling musician on New York's Lower East Side goes on tour and and a local thug tries moving in on wife who in return rebuffs him. He robs the husband upon return but also gets her out of a jam at great cost. In the interim a gang war breaks out.

Musketeers presents inner city life in graphic terms of overcrowding and squalor. Griffith does a fine job of balancing the two major story lines that intersect and further helped along by the innocent beauty of Lillian Gish and charismatic evil of Elmer Booth for casting Cagney. There's a well done suspense building montage into a gunfight (including a jarring close-up of Booth) along with a series of other moments that must have given pause to the folks out in the country to visit the Big Apple. Pig Alley is an an American pioneer.

A pioneering short by filmmaking giant D.W. Griffith, "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" is a decent flick featuring one of the first depictions of gangsters onscreen and one of the early uses of follow focus. A series of events portray the life of the poor in all its rough messiness: death, arguments, gang wars, fistfights, shootouts, date rapes, crowded and dirty streets, shabby lodgings, etc.. Elmer Booth personified the image of the gangster of early film with his cocky and self-assured jauntiness setting the stage for future tough guys like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Lillian Gish was lovely as her usual ethereal self showing that she was Griffith's muse from the very start. Like most films of this vintage the main appeal is the view into the distant past, a time travel seeing people and their surroundings from long ago. Added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its historical importance, this is an interesting artifact from a bygone time that is still viewable for its historical interest and artistic quality.