Romance of a Jewess

One of Griffith's early directing efforts, Romance of a Jewess already shows some of the themes that would interest Griffith for most of his career: the clash of both races and generations, Jewish ghetto life, and the sentimental position the beloved mother apparently holds in the life of all men.

The story is simple and eternal. A young Jewish woman, working in the pawnshop owned by her recently widowed father - we see the mother's death in what seems to be a somewhat superfluous scene - rebels against the arranged marriage organised for her by him, and chooses a native Indian bookseller, much to her father's displeasure. The father banishes her from his sight, but he and his daughter are fated to be reunited under tragic circumstances...

The film is fairly ordinary, but clearly well directed for the time, although the acting is still very much of the exaggerated gesture school. Only in the brief scenes in which Griffith takes his camera out onto the real streets of New York does the film truly come alive.

It was interesting to see the American Bioscope logo clearly visible on the wall of the pawnshop, put there by the makers in an attempt to stop other distributors from duping the film (copying it and passing it off under their own name - a practice that was common in the wild, early days of cinema). It's also amusing to note that, even though a number of years pass during the telling of the story, the old pawnbroker still hasn't managed to shift that guitar hanging on the wall...

One of the themes that the 33 year old D.W. Griffith liked to explore was race relations, particularly between the native Indians and the settled American community. In this film, He explores the romantic relationship between an American and a Jewess which took two days of shooting (1 external, 1 internal).

By October of 1908, D.W. Griffith had advanced far enough in his study of movie direction to try some experimentation without the guidance of Wallace McCutcheon Jr.; after all, he had been doing this for three months by now. So when he made this movie, he was ready to do some things differently. In this one, it's the Jewish father who rejects the prospective gentile son-in-law; there are only a couple of titles in the entire movie, which is quite remarkable for 1908; and there are two sequences -- short, but definitely there -- in which Griffith and company venture outside the confines of the studio to take a look at a busy commercial street of the Lower East Side, and the composition is good and no one looks at the camera, although one person does look at one of the main characters as he hurries down the street.

That may not strike you as noteworthy. Of course people aren't going to look at the camera! Yet a week ago I looked at a feature from 1914, with a tracking shot set on the same street, and people looked at the camera. So either Griffith was able to get everyone on Hester Street to do what he said -- which I guarantee you, he could not -- or he had convinced his bosses to let him hire enough actors to fill up the street, everyone to do something that made sense. You do this and you do that, and you look at him when he rushes by. That's not cheap for ten seconds of screen time, but that is apparently what he did. However, it was only the beginning.

I'd like to write more about the story, about the sheer humanity of beginning it with the death of the Jewish family's mother and casting lovely Florence Lawrence as the Jewess, but you wouldn't believe me if I told you that. You're convinced D.W. Griffith was a racist by any standard, even for 1908. So I'll just mention that amazing, natural-looking crowd scene and let it go at that.

Romance of a Jewess (1908)

** (out of 4)

A female working in a pawn shop oversteps her arranged marriage so that she can be with her true love who just happens to be an Indian. Slight melodrama from D.W. Griffith really doesn't have anything overly interesting going for it.

Song of the Shirt, The (1908)

** (out of 4)

More melodrama from D.W. Griffith, this time he covers the poor living in an urban area. Once again, nothing too special here, although Griffith does a nice job at showing off the living conditions of these poor people.

Money Mad (1908)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A homeless man finds a wallet full of money and this sets off a mad cap of adventure for various characters. Here's a comedy from Griffith, which remains interesting throughout even though the comedy never really shines through.