The Battle of Elderbush Gulch

Epic early film, directed by D.W. Griffith. Mae Marsh, her little sister, and their dogs are orphaned - they must go to live with an uncle. Aboard their coach is young couple Lillian Gish and Robert Harron, celebrating the birth of their first child. The coach arrives in Elderbush Gluch. Marsh's uncle tells her she can't keep the dogs, and they are put out. There are Indians (Native Americans) nearby; and, Indians love to eat dog meat (no kidding?). These Indians are hungry! Lionel Barrymore is sympathetic to Ms. Marsh, desiring to help her recover the runaway dogs. While rescuing the puppies, an Indian is shot - resulting in a "Cowboys vs. Indians" confrontation.

This "Saga of the American West" is certainly an important film; however, the reliable Griffith performers begin to overplay their hands, and the story is too contrived. Many of the Griffith elements are in place - some good, and a few bad. "The Battle at Elderbush Gluch" foreshadows the later epic, "Birth of a Nation".

******* The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (3/28/14) D.W. Griffith ~ Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Lillian Gish

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.

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.

Two girls (one is played by Mae Marsh) move in with their uncle. Nearby, and Indian tribe has just concluded their dog-eating festival. The Indian Chief's son (an unrecognizable Henry B. Walthall) arrives too late for the feast and is angry. Now the girls just happen to have two puppies. Now the puppies just happen to escape from the girls. Now Walthall just happens to spot his potential meal. Now Marsh goes looking for the puppies and accosts Walthall. Now Marsh's uncle just happens to be looking for Marsh and shoots Walthall. Now the rest of the tribe is angry and decides to attack the town, leading to a well staged gunfight which is resolved once the soldiers arrive.

Lillian Gish plays the mother of a newborn, and she and her husband (Robert Harron) have just arrived in town. Gish gives the best acting performance as she almost has a nervous breakdown trying to find her baby once the shooting starts.

In one very creepy scene, during the attack, we see a gun being pointed down at Gish, but it is eventually withdrawn. I assumed this scene was meant to illustrate that being shot would be preferable to whatever these Indians would do to you. There is a scene similar to this in Birth of a Nation, but don't think this is just some thing of D.W. Griffith's. In Stagecoach, a 1939 John Ford film, the same scene is played out.

Many of the cast members were reunited for The Birth of a Nation. Harry Carey is supposed to be in this, but I couldn't spot him. I did spot Lionel Barrymore as a soldier, and he certainly has a great physique here at age 34. Recommended as a good piece of silent drama, and I usually don't even like westerns.

No other film before "The Birth of a Nation" better shows the potential D.W. Griffith could direct something of such scope than does "The Battle at Elderbush Gulch". His direction of the battle scenes here are the best precursor to those in "The Birth of a Nation", even so much as for this website to say that the later film references this one. Griffith's last picture for Biograph, "Judith of Bethulia", had battle scenes, too, but nothing was added to the grammar. It was a larger battle than the one in this film, yet Griffith didn't have the budget or time to make it grand. He was going over-budget and making a feature-length film without permission from studio-heads.

The battle scenes in this film are on a smaller scale. Within that battle, there's focus on small skirmishes via extensive crosscutting. It's brutal--an infant is tossed around at one point, which I hope was a trick-shot of some sort. There's lots of smoke. There are multiple plot lines throughout, which are interlinked fluently in the climax.

All of this creates an omniscient, unrestricted narrative. The bird's eye views of the fighting are a style still used today, although the irises aren't. Griffith and Billy Bitzer further display their mastering of camera distance with frequent use of medium shots. They hadn't figured out how to do an onrush shot yet, though, as the camera position of the cavalry is boring; they'd correct that in "The Birth of a Nation". There's the missing wall in interior shots; they'd never correct that.

As fellow posters have condemned, this film is a precursor of "The Birth of a Nation" in another way: racism. Although I suppose it is racism either way, I doubt that Griffith intended to portray Native Americans ridiculously (he clearly stated that he considered Blacks to be childlike, although he didn't agree that was racist), but rather it was the result of his lack of understanding any particular tribal culture or fully understanding film representation. Bad acting didn't help, either. Only Lillian Gish and Mae Marsh really knew what they're doing. Anyhow, Griffith's earlier short film, "The Redman's View" was an attempt to be respectful of the Native-American population, even though it's a boring movie.

(Note: This is one of three short films by D.W. Griffith that I've commented on, with some arrangement in mind. The other films are "A Corner in Wheat" and "The Girl and Her Trust".)