Their One Love

The Thanhouser Film Company of New Rochelle, New York, was active for almost a decade (1909 to 1918) during which the studio produced hundreds of short films. Thanhouser's releases included comedies, melodramas, and at least one horror film, but based on the surviving examples it appears the studio specialized in Biograph-style social dramas, stories that sometimes had tragic plot twists and didn't always end happily.

Their One Love is a one-reel effort from the studio that has elements in common with D.W. Griffith's early work. The story begins in the mid-19th century and concerns a pair of sisters, Madeline and Marion, who are both in love with the same young man, Jack. When the Civil War breaks out Jack joins the local Union regiment and marches off to battle, but not before pledging his love to Marion --as Madeline looks on, sadly. Before leaving he also gives each girl a souvenir button from his uniform. As time passes Marion becomes aware of Madeline's love for Jack, and writes him a letter declaring that she's aware of their love for one another, but before she can post it word comes of Jack's death in battle. An epilogue set fifty years later in 1915 reveals the two elderly sisters, presumably spinsters, still living at the family home together.

The most notable feature of this short drama is a technical breakthrough, an elaborately staged battle sequence filmed entirely at night. These scenes were no doubt inspired by Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which premiered in New York three weeks before this film began production. The sequence is impressive, especially when a Confederate cannon plummets off a bridge into a stream, but over all this short lacks the inspired touches Griffith imparted to similar material at Biograph. The sisters are portrayed by real-life siblings Madeline and Marion Fairbanks, who were identical twins. The girls are so similar in appearance, right down to identical outfits, that it's impossible to tell them apart from scene to scene, which makes it difficult to follow the story. Not one of the three central characters is given any distinctive personal traits to encourage audience identification or sympathy; in fact, we don't even learn their names until the movie is almost over.

Their One Love is a minor work, but not without interest for film buffs. For me the best reason to watch is a simple but charming recurring motif: in order to indicate the passage of time we are periodically shown a desk calendar giving the dates of the story's three sections: March 1853, June 1861, and April 1915. As the story moves from one era to the next a tiny Father Time figure, complete with robe, white beard, and scythe, totters across the desk-top and tears away each calendar page. You won't find this sort of thing very often in movies made after the end of the silent era, and certainly not in serious dramas, but it's the kind of unselfconscious visual metaphor I always enjoy encountering in early films.