Rescued from an Eagle's Nest

After acting on stage for several years, D.W. Griffith, who was dead broke, turned to writing movie treatments, one of which he submitted to Edison Studios. It was personally promptly rejected by its producer, Edwin Porter, but he was offered an acting role in an upcoming movie because of his large frame. Griffith accepted.

In his first role on the screen, he's the father in January 1908's "Rescued from an Eagle's Nest." What's remarkable about this movie, besides Griffith's first appearance on film, is the special effects of an eagle carrying a real-life baby in the air. The kid doesn't look too happy. Richard Murphy's handling of the mechanical eagle is quite ingenious, especially as the stop-motion substitution of the baby to a mannequin in the initial swooping scene, is quite effective.

On the negative side, J. Searle Dawley, who was just hired by Edison Studios and had a stage background, directed this seven-minute one-reeler. His camera is static throughout and the rescue on the cliff could improve if only he had panned left for better framing.

Meanwhile, for Griffith, the role opened the door for him to make a career in cinema: six months later, he's directing for American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, one of Edison Studios' competitors.

I guess the most convincing performance in this early silent drama comes from the baby as it is carried through the air by an eagle. The poor little ankle-biter screams his (or her) lungs out as we see him flying across a dodgy background while in the eagle's clutches. Really gets into the part, she (or he) does. Most everything else about the film is average at best, but at least the plot is easy to follow. Films were still too early for leading men or women to stamp their personality on a role, so it's not really possible to pass an opinion on the performance of D. W. Griffith and his fellow actors, other than to say they are no better or worse than others of the time. The special effects are pretty second rate - even for 1908 - but director J. Searle Darley demonstrates a sound grasp of the techniques that were then available to him.

The lesson learned: Don't leave babies where eagles can steal them. This is a pretty ambitious little film with D.W. Griffith the hero. I did enjoy the fight with the eagle on the cliff and the weirdness of the baby being carried by an eagle barely flapping its wings. I'm sure expectations were pretty low and this satisfied the viewing public pretty well.

While J. Searle Dawley had made many shorts and features during the silent era, he's not the reason I included this film in my Early Works of Film Directors series of reviews on this site. In fact, I hadn't even known about him till I looked up this short on this site just now. No, the reason I included this one is because of who the leading actor in this one was: a future director named D. W. Griffith! He was from the theater and had written some plays but his last one was not successful so he submitted a script to the Edison studio which was rejected by the producer from there-one Edwin S. Porter-the same one who had made the innovative and popular The Great Train Robbery several years back. But since Griffith was also an actor, Porter decided to cast him here as a man whose son gets kidnapped by an eagle just as he's working with other men on chopping trees. Porter was also the cinematographer here so there are some pretty good matching of studio and location shots. The model animal isn't too bad especially when it carries the live baby. Some close-ups would have helped especially since it's not easy to recognize the lead actor as Griffith. But this was pretty entertaining for the 7-minute running time. Griffith would appear as extras in other films which would eventually help him prepare for his own directorial debut which happened later in the year he made this one...

In terms of quality, this is a pretty uneven feature, but it is certainly interesting. The story creates some good suspense, and although it seems pretty far-fetched, it was said to have been based, at least in part, on an actual incident. Some significant parts of the story rely heavily on special effects that do not hold up very well by later standards, yet they do tell the story clearly.

This movie might be best known now for the very early screen appearance of D.W. Griffith, as the father whose child is carried away by the eagle. His performance is at least adequate for its time, as are those of the rest of the cast.

The movie uses several sequences of visual effects to depict the eagle's capture of the child, and its subsequent conflict with Griffith. As was often the case in movies by Edwin S. Porter and other Edison film-makers, the emphasis is on making it clear what is happening, rather than on striving for a completely seamless or convincing effect. This makes the special effects look very unconvincing now, but to their original audience, they probably looked a lot better.

This seems to have been a pretty ambitious effort for its day, and even if it does not look very impressive now, it has enough interesting aspects to be worth watching.