Ramona

When Native American Allesandro first glimpses Ramona (Mary Pickford) he is completely smitten. After singing and strumming a tune on his guitar Ramona becomes romantically drawn to the benign Allesandro in spite of the the strong societal taboos facing such a relationship. They elope together but wherever they turn they are met with racist fury.

Before and after (Broken Blossoms) Birth of a Nation DW Griffith had no qualms about magnifying white man intolerance towards minorities. In Ramona he does a fine job of creating immense sympathy for the lovers and clear condemnation for the violent loutish behavior of the conquerers.

There are some stunning vistas to behold in this on location shoot in Ventura County CA. as the outcasts retreat to the perceived freedom of the great outdoors. Griffith's compositions are however mostly stilted and poorly blocked but it does not lessen the impact that Ramona is a brave socially conscious film that dares to hold up a mirror to the face of the majority of ticket buyers and take the other side.

Griffith had an affinity for RAMONA, having appeared in two stage versions of the novel and having hectored his bosses into paying a hundred dollars for screen rights -- this two-reeler was advertised as the most expensive picture ever made. It falls into the class of Griffith films in which he expresses sympathy for minorities and suggests that the best thing to do with people is to leave them alone. This statement may come as a bit of a shocker to those whose only knowledge of Griffith is knowing, second hand about the racism of BIRTH OF A NATION, but none to those who are familiar with more of his work: BROKEN BLOSSOMS also falls into this category and, to a great extent, so does BOAN.

Although this film is full of fine visual touches -- some excellent deep-focus shots of the characters with the distant mountains behind them dominate the camera-work --and has good performances by Mary Pickford in the title role and a slightly over-the-top performance by Henry Walthall, there is far too much solitary posing and the two reels are too brief for the story. Still, Pickford and Walthall are excellent in their scenes together, Griffith has some lovely landscape to work with and his stock company is up to their usual level of competence.

The first movie to be adapted from a novel that paid an author a fee for rights to use the story was Biograph Studio's "Ramona," released in May 1910. Director D.W. Griffith insisted the studio pay Helen Hunt Jackson $100 to translate her best-selling book to film. The sentiment of Griffith paying an author for the rights may have been because of the pending appeal of the case against Karem Studios working itself through the courts to the Supreme Court. That was the 1907 "Ben Hur" litigation suit on the studio using the Ben Hur story without the author's heirs' permission. Griffith made sure his audience noticed the attribution to the author by stating her name and and the book's publisher in the opening credits--a first in cinema.

"Ramona" stars Mary Pickford as a Spanish orphan who falls in love with a Native American. Griffith uses solitary or small groups of people to symbolize the larger historical scope of the white man civilization's treatment of constantly evicting Native Americans from their lands. Here, the Indians are represented by a ranch worker who falls in love with Ramona, who returns his passion. Once the Spanish Californians realize the mixed race affair, they go about burning the Indian village where her lover resides, causing a dislocation of the natives from the area.

"Ramona" was filmed in Ventura County, CA, during Griffith's winter stay in that state's warmer climate. Taking advantage of its stunning typography, Griffith used the high, rugged mountains as a backdrop to capture the movie's eye-popping visuals as the drama unfolds before his camera.

Regrettably, this is not a good film by any standards. Aside from fine location photography, it's a complete mess. Of course, it's an epic tale of love and suffering, squeezed into less than 20 minutes, filmed probably in a couple of days. But even under these circumstances it should have been better. As the film proceeds, it becomes more and more ludicrous, with white men perpetually stepping into the frame, declaring "This is my land!". The acting is disastrous. Mary Pickford has only two expressions in her acting book; the tragic death of Alessandro (Henry B. Walthall) sadly comes across as one of the funniest in the silent films. Only veteran Francis J. Grandon gives a decent, less-than-rabid performance in one of his last films, before he turned into directing. All said, the film is presented on BluRay in good quality and has a soaring (contemporary) score, played by violin and piano. Wouldn't hurt one to watch it, but make sure this isn't your first encounter with Miss Pickford. She has done better.

This film was an adaptation of Helen Hunt Jackson's 'Ramona'. Griffith gravitated towards this project because his previous film, 'The Two Brothers', came to a halt because of three days of rain. He felt like a caged lion being trapped inside his hotel room, and decided to get to work on his next project: this one.