The Battle of Elderbush Gulch

The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch was Griffith's longest and most expensive short he had made up to that point. In it we see him trying to perfect the large-scale action scene that would be necessary in his full-length features, packing in all the elements that had made his previous action shorts successful.

Griffith uses the western format – already the ideal backdrop for pure, straight-ahead action set pieces – as the setting for his first epic battle. Like many westerns of the 1910s, the starting point is a character from the east heading out west – a device which perhaps helped ease the audience into the wilderness, and here those easterners are a pair of children, which was important for the type of picture this develops into. For Griffith, you couldn't have action without a sense of vulnerability and here he crams it in, with the kids from back east, Lillian Gish as the distraught mother of "the only baby in town" and even some puppies that are at risk of ending up on the Indians' menu.

All this paves the way for an exceedingly complex and layered action sequence, blending the trapped heroine scenario and the ride-to-the-rescue with the battles that Griffith had been depicting since his earliest Civil War pictures in 1909. There is a phenomenal amount going on here, and Griffith does very well at maintaining the exhilarating pace throughout and keeping everything coherent and logical. However, juggling x amount of elements in an action sequence does not necessarily make it that many times more exciting, no matter how skilfully they are balanced, and Griffith did create better tension-soaked finales before and after this one.

But even a Griffith picture so heavily focused on action would not be without its drama, characterisation and atmospherics. In The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch, the emotional set-up is dealt with briefly but economically. First, we have the scene in which the waifs leave their home. The cart they travel on heads away from the camera, making use of depth and distance to express their moving away from safety and civilization. An equally effective scene is the one in which we are introduced to the young family of Gish, Bobby Harron and their baby. The people of the town coo over the precious tot, then saunter off screen, revealing that two Indians were watching them from the background, adding a sinister little note of danger.

Of course, many viewers today have pointed out The Battle at Elderbrush Gulch's offensive portrayal of Native Americans (in contrast with the more sympathetic Red Man's View), but perhaps all is not what it seems. First of all, take a look at the Indian Chief's son's waistcoat – it's black and covered in shiny white dots. It looks to me like a pearly king's jacket, perhaps modified slightly for the warmer climate. Now have a look at the "war dance" they perform later on – it has a certain "knees-up Mother Brown" air to it. These aren't Indians, they're cockneys! So it shouldn't be offensive to Native Americans. Just cockneys.

It's hard to imagine that "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch", directed by the legendary D.W. Griffith, was made a way back in 1914. It is a showcase for Griffith's emerging style.

The story centers around a group of settlers called the Cameron Brothers and their families which include a young waif (Mae Marsh) sent out from the east to live with her uncles and a young wife (Lillian Gish) who has just given birth. A group of Indians tries to capture the waif's pet dogs and are driven off by the men folk. During the confrontation the Indian Chief's son (Henry B. Wathall) is killed. The Indian chief plots his revenge and launches an attack on the small community of Elderbush Gulch.

It is this attack, which is quite brutal and graphic for this or any other time, that forms the core of the picture. The Indians slaughter the towns folk, women and children alike and drive them out of town towards the Cameron's homestead. The newborn baby becomes separated from its mother and all hell breaks loose. Someone goes for help and returns in the nick of time with the calvary.

The battle scenes contain some graphic violence. For example, we see a woman being scalped alive and there is also a sequence where we see a horse being shot down. I have never seen an animal being slain so convincingly on screen. Mr.Griffith was becoming a master of staging large scale battle scenes, a talent that he would use extensively in his epic Civil War drama, "The Birth of a Nation" released the following year.

Even though it runs a scant 29 minutes, "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch" is nonetheless an exciting and historic bit of film making. See if you can spot Lionel Barrymore and Harry Carey in bit parts.

Directing over two hundred short one/two reelers for Biograph Company beginning in 1908, the studio's premier director, D. W. Griffith, by the fall of 1913 was getting discouraged from being restricted in creating longer, feature films. He was witnessing epic movies imported from Italy shown to packed audiences and felt his talents were being wasted in directing 15 to 30 minute films for Biograph.

Before he left the only movie studio he ever worked for, Griffith directed one of his final career short films, October 1913's "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch." The movie would prove to be his last in a long line of westerns he directed.

Griffith's portrayal of Native Americans varied through his Western canon. At times, such as 1909's "The Redman's View," the director/writer was sympathetic towards the Indians' plight against Western Civilization's incursion into their homelands. In "Elderbush," however, he resorts the stereotype image of the savage bent on eating domesticated dogs and attacking and killing white civilians for revenge.

Whatever private feelings he harbored for the Native Americans, Griffith would perfect his cinematic skills in cross-cutting and camera placements to heighten the visual excitement of the Indian raid. Many elements seen in "Elderbush" would be duplicated in his "Birth of a Nation," especially its conclusion, as well as in "Intolerance," Griffith's masterpiece.

While I score the movie a 7, I also should point out that it is both interesting historically (as it stars Mae Marsh, Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore when they were all younger and less well-known) and features pretty exciting action for its day.

The plot is odd for a Western, in that all the trouble with the Indians begins for the weirdest reason I have ever seen! The Indians decide to have a giant dog banquet (no, they are not feeding dogs, but feeding ON dogs) and when two Indians arrive late, there are not pooches left! So, they steal two dogs belonging to two orphans from the nearby White settlement and this actually touches off an all-out war!!!! Not only is this silly, but seems to play on the prejudices of audiences. I don't know if American Indians actually ate dog, but it sounds like the sort of stereotype that later was applied to other ethnic groups. All this over dogs! The movie has some excellent battle scenes and exciting moments--such as when Ms. Marsh crawls across the battlefield to save a baby! Exciting stuff! But, STRANGE, too!

Given the limited cinematic methods available in 1913, this is an impressive achievement, and it still makes for pretty good viewing today. It's also interesting in that its perspective is largely morally-neutral (except perhaps from what today's viewers might read into it), so that the excitement comes mostly from the danger of the situation, rather than from one side being entirely right and the other being entirely wrong.

The build-up to the battle is done rather well, enabling you to identify with the characters, while making some points of its own. Neither side in the confrontation is really in the right, yet Griffith's technique arouses your keen interest in the events to come.

But it is the filming of the actual "Battle at Elderbush Gulch" that is so noteworthy. To create such a sensation of action, turmoil, and emotion using the limited camera field of the times is remarkable. There are a lot of carefully chosen and composed shots, and Griffith also adds in some techniques that were new or relatively new at the time. There are several well-chosen 'iris' shots, and a variety of close-in and distant camera fields that pull you in and out of the action as the director wishes.

It's a fine achievement for its time, at the very least in technical terms, and would probably be well worth a look today for those with an interest in silent movies.