The Birth of the Star Spangled Banner

Francis Scott Key is charged with hiding the Declaration of Insependence when the British invade Washington in the War of 1812. He also gets to write the national anthem in this poor movie.

It's a common fault of movies made to celebrate historical events: the standard images must be shown and there must not be the smallest doubt as to what the audience is looking at in a sponsored film. That's the only reason I can think of as to why the Edison Studio, which a couple of years earlier had been producing the most nearly title-free movies in the business, with its own style of editing, was now producing a movie like this, in which there is little in the way of telling a story by acting or moving a camera. Title after title could have been removed from the screen, replaced by a more revealing angle, but no one seemed to have thought of it.

I had hoped to gain a glimpse of Harry Beaumont, who became a great director for MGM, but he is credited as one of three aides to the tyrannical English general; I have no idea which one he is. The rest of the movie is of little more note, full of things that might have been done to interest the viewer but were not.