The Woman in Black

Believe it or not, you can actually find Lionel Barrymore's first feature film on YouTube. It's over one hundred years old. It was made 111 years ago, in 1914, and it's still preserved for you to watch. So, although it's probably the hammiest silent movie I've ever seen in my life, I'm so glad I saw it. It has all the hair pulling, eye rolling, and arm waving that you'd expect to see in a classic "Pay the rent - I can't pay the rent!" melodramas. It also features Alan Hale as the young romantic lead; who would have thought?

Lionel is the bad guy (of course) and in the beginning, he "seduces" a young gypsy girl. I use that word in quotes because it's more rape than seduction. He grabs her hand, yanks her to an abandoned shed, slams the door, and in the next scene, he saunters out smoking a cigarette and she's sobbing into her hands. He offers her money for her trouble, but she throws the bills on the ground and vows to get revenge instead. Pretty heavy stuff for 1914, isn't it? It's no wonder early Hollywood considered a Censorship board, since there were such improper subject matters glorified on the big screen bewitching millions of people. Back in 1914, before women could even vote or show their ankles in public, they could attend a picture show and see a young girl get raped. It's no wonder Lionel Barrymore was typecast as a villain.

Charles Hill Mailes has lost all the money he has collected on his city contract. So he goes to his bandsman, Lionel Barrymore. Barrymore gives him enough money to carry out his contract, which Mailes soon loses. Meanwhile Barrymore has gone on a vacation, during which he seduces and abandons gypsy Marie Newton. Barrymore returns and promises to gives Mailes the money to keep him out of jail in return for his daughter, Millicent Evans. He also insists that Mailes fire his engineer and Miss Evans' intended, Alan Hale. Hale gets himself nominated as the Reform candidate in the upcoming election.

It's one of the features that Klaw & Erlanger produced for Biograph after they rid themselves of D. W. Griffith. All of the reforms he made are gone, except for the Biograph Right Wall. The story is from a stage success, and told via titles and excessive arm-waving, even by Barrymore, who knew better; blame director Lawrence Marston. The copy was not in good shape, and whoever produced this copy decided to fill the soundtrack with jazzy hits of the 1920s that bore no relation to what was happening onscreen. So: decent if antiquated story, bad production, idiotic soundtrack.

With the principal impetus coming from the smaller film-producing countries - Italy (all companies), Germany (the films of Asta Nilsson) Nordisk in Denmark, Kahnzankov in Russia (the films of Yevgeny Bauer and Yakov Protazonov), even, in its own rather staid and literary way (lots of Dickens), Britain, the full-length feature was everywhere by 1914. Only in France and the US were the oldest established companies (Pathé and Gaumont, Edison and Biograph) notably reluctant to take the plunge. The reason wa simple enough. Full-length features were an account-book nightmare - unpredictable increase in costs, unknown risks and uncertain profit.

Unable to withstand the pressure, they sought solutions that would somehow allow them to spread or minimise the risk. Vitagraph followed the British exampe in relying largely on classics, although it proved a staregy rathr less well-adapted to the US market. The most successful and the most innovative risk-reduction device was without doubt the serial-film which spawned in the process an entirely new genre. In France Pathé also used its semi-detached association with Le Film d'Art to co-produce longer films that it could always disown if the expense got out of hand.

Biograph entered in 1913 into a rather similar arrangemet with the theatrical producers Klaw and Erlanger, the idea being that the latter would produce a series of longer films (three-reelers, between forty minutes and an hour) based on sucessful stage plays that they owned. They announced with great pomp and circumstance on 12 March 1913 that the new company would be called The Protective Amusement Company (general manager Pat Casey), although there is not much sign that his bizarre appellation was ever really used), would involve film-producers A. H. Woods and T. Hayes Hunter (the latter being overall artistic director for the series) for which an entirely new studio would be built. Cinemas were to be sold exclusive rights to the films which would then be exhibited at a somewhat higher price. The intention was to produe two "plays" per week.

Rather like Vitagraph's literary fare, this all provided a litle highbrow for general US tastes and the series does not sem to have been much of a success, but at least thirty films were produced. They all made use of the existing Biograph directors (Frank Powell, dell Henderson, Lawrence Marston etc) and the actors ad actresses, most notably perhaps the Gish sisters (Liberty Belle, Man's Enemy and Lord Chumley all starred Lillian while A Fair Rebel starred Dorothy) and Lionel Barrymore (Women Against Wome, Men and Women, Under the Gaslight, The Power of the Press and Dora Thorne). All the films seem to have been made in 1914 although many were subsequently re-released by Biograph during 1915 and 1916.

This film - a good old-fashioned melodrama (it is based on a play of 1896-1897 by ) also stars Barrymore who dominates the film as the villain Crane. It has many elements that were still fashioable - gypsies, reform politicians versus city bosses) and is elegantly mis en scène by Marston and well filmed by Gaudio.

This film is available from the Library of Congress paper print oollection. Another of the Klaw and Erlanger films, the comedy The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary directed by Edward Dillon, is also available frm LoC..