The Moonshiner

When small pop-up theaters began showing longer dramatic films rather than short actualities in the early 1900's, films such as 1904's The Moonshiner was one of the reasons why these informal store-front rooms began to evolve into permanent movie houses, called Nichelodeons.

This Wallace McKutcheon-directed and story written film details in 12 minutes how a backwoods moonshine operation looks like. The comings and goings of customers and suppliers to a remote cabin run by a family (whose daughter is strikingly beautiful for the times) making illegal alcohol. Intermixed is an undercover agent who spots the illicit front and rides off to get reinforcements. Through it all, Billy Bitzer, who years later would become the primary cameraman for D. W. Griffith, uses a series of pan shots, recently introduced to the technology of filmmaking, to show these numerous arrivals and departures.

The documentary-like film finally settles into a YouTube-like video with, what was very unusual for its time, several inter titles on how to make moonshine from a still. After several lengthy minutes, the arrival of the agents finally gets things percolating. The conclusion begins with a physical fight involving a chokehold applied to the moonshiners' lookout (a technique that would be illegal in today's law enforcement world) as well as a series of gunshots that leaves scores dead. Such violence of the intensity portrayed was not quite seen before on the bedsheet used as a projector screen, and it is indeed worth sticking around for the surprise ending-- a death scene that still burns in my mind several days after seeing it.

This Biograph movie from 1904 is a prime example of the pre-Griffith story-telling technique at the studio. It is not a particularly interesting or cinematic movie, but it does show the form at its best and makes it clear why Griffith, once he entered the field, was able to change film so utterly. It's not that Griffith would invent the techniques that made his movies superior for the era and still watchable today; he put them together in a way that we still use.

The way director Wallace MacCutcheon tells this story of moonshiners versus revenue agents is that of an illustrated book. The movie is offered as a series of titles that tell the viewer what is about to happen, followed by showing the viewer. This means that the viewer is told what is going to happen and obliterates all dramatic tension. Nor, for the first ten minutes of this twelve-minute film, does much happen of much interest. We see people driving in wagons and unloading them. We see people standing around talking. We see people walking. At the end, there is fighting and shooting and people dying, but it's a long wait to get there, given the one-shot-per-scene editing.

Cameraman Billy Bitzer offers some pan shots early on that gives the viewer a sense of movement and the feeling that something is going on outside the small image on the screen, but that ends after the first few set-ups MacCutcheon would expand the scope of this style of movie-making, but it would never amount to much on its own. It would prove to be too and uninvolving. It would vanish like a puff of smoke.

This short drama is probably more noteworthy for its resourceful technique than for its story, but it does have some fairly good action sequences in addition to the technical strengths. Its most noticeable feature is the frequent camera movement, which it uses several times in order to follow the action more continuously. It also uses title cards (in the old "tableau" format) more liberally than most movies from 1904 would have done.

The story shows the activities of "The Moonshiner" and the government agents who are trying to stop him. You have to watch rather carefully in the first part, since some of the characters and actions are rather indistinct. After that, things move quickly, and there is some suspense in addition to the action. The tone remains serious throughout. The main thing missing is that the characters are only faintly developed. Otherwise, it's put together pretty well for its time.

Moonshiner, The (1904)

*** (out of 4)

Biograph short tells the story of a moonshiner who goes out to sell the day's whiskey but he's being trailed by a government agent. This short runs 11-minutes but sadly they didn't do much with the story. The early scenes drag on a lot longer than they should. Just take a look at the scene where the moonshiner is walking to his still. He just walks and walks and walks. There's some nice action at the end that makes this work viewing including one rather violent, if over the top, death scene. Camera by G.W. Bitzer.