The Ex-Convict

"The Ex-Convict" is a surprising film. For 1904, it's surprisingly impactful even when seen today. This is unusual because stories with this much depth were definitely NOT the norm at that time.

The tale is about an ex-convict who cannot seem to escape his past. Although he has a loving family supporting him, he cannot find work. Initially, he gets a job and a cop rouses him at work about his past and he's soon fired. When prospective employers find out about his past, they won't even give him a chance. In the midst of all this, he sees a child in the street...about to get hit by a car. So he rushes out and saves the kid. What happens next? Well, not exactly what you are expecting. Watch the film and you'll see.

For 1904, the film avoids much of the overacting common of the day and instead tells a story and tells it pretty well for that time. Worth seeing and an interesting curio.

An ex-convict tries to make his way in the world honestly, but every gate is barred to him.

It's a heavy-handed movie to the modern, middle-class eye, but a real problem that persists and grows ever more prominent every year. It's told in bleak imagery. Most people think that early movies are cheap, slapstick comedies or actualities, brief bits of the real world which offer us the commonplaces of a vanished world. Yet the audience for these early movies was lower class, and the nickel they spent for a program of movies was real money. Like everyone, they wanted to see problems they encountered, that meant something to them, and this one certainly does.

There's enough material in this story about "The Ex-Convict" to fill a full-length feature, so as a one-reeler it is quite packed with story developments. Although the quick pace slightly dilutes its impact, for its era and genre it is a solid effort.

The story would most likely have been quite topical in its day, and it is not at all without relevance now. It focuses on a former convict who is earnest and sincere in his desires to reform and to support his family, yet who faces one obstacle after another. The injustices that he encounters because of his past seem believable, and although some of the later story developments are rather coincidence-dependent, they help in making the point. The plot is also well within the understood conventions of its time.

Although many of the movies from 1900-1905 concentrate strictly on just one or two story developments, there are a fair number of features, like this one, that are more ambitious. It's rather interesting that in so many cases, even an involved plot like this was filmed as a one-reeler, when it might have been even more effective at greater length. To some degree at least, it was still just a convention that movies were so much shorter than stage productions - but after all, in every era there are conventions that are accepted, to a large extent, just because everyone else follows them.

All that aside, this is a solid enough film for 1904, and it may well have served a useful purpose in dramatizing a social problem that is by no means limited to its own era.

This early Edison Company story film, "The Ex-Convict", made by Edwin S. Porter (of "The Great Train Robbery") is one of the earliest sustained social commentary pictures. It presents and is critical of a social problem, which in this case is an ex-convict who is discouraged into returning to crime. Other such early message films include Georges Méliès's stance against anti-Semitic injustice with "The Dreyfuss Affair" (1899), James Williamson's "The Little Match Seller" (1902) about a homeless child freezing to death, the teetotal message "Buy Your Own Cherries" (1904), Pathé's "La Grève" (The Strike) (1904), and another Edison film, "The Kleptomaniac" (1905). Historian Charles Musser ("Before the Nickelodeon") also praises "The Ex-Convict" for being an early example of a play adapted for the screen, as opposed to the filmed plays, which were more of transports rather than adaptations, such as Porter's earlier "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1903) and "Parsifal" (1904). "The Ex-Convict" makes use of locations and added to the narrative, which was originally a one-act vaudeville play.

In its eight shots, the ex-convict loses a job and fails to find another due to his past. Adding to the sympathy, he has a wife and sick child at home. He also saves another child from being hit by a speeding motorcar. Out of desperation, he burglarizes a home, but is saved when recognized for his earlier heroism. It's a rather sweet ending for a brief, primitive film from 1904. A title card introduces each scene, and in the tableau fashion, tells us what we later will see. Titles stating "That man is an ex-convict" and "That man saved my life" discourage much of the pacing from today's perspective. Additionally, the scenes here were filmed from an extreme long shot position-farther away from the characters than was usual even back then. The theatrical source seems to become most apparent in the interior scenes, where a few feet of floorboards visibly separate us from the characters-maintaining the proscenium arch. Of course, much is to be forgiven in the film due to its age and brevity; and, besides, it's one of the more interesting early subjects.

Ex-Convict, The (1904)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Wonderful little short about an ex con finding it impossible to find people that trusts him enough to give him a job. This all changes when he saves a young girl from being ran over by a car. This here runs just over nine minutes and it's rather amazing at how much detail they squeeze in. There's no doubt the film is a political statement saying cons should be forgiven once their time is served but the ending is quite sad and very touching.

Strenuous Life; Or the Anti-Race Suicide (1904)

** (out of 4)

Another Edison short, boring as hell and I'm really not sure what it was about. The most interesting thing was the "warning" at the start of the film that other filmmakers are not allowed to use clips from this film in their film.

Kleptomaniac, The (1905)

*** (out of 4)

Another political statement from Edison that still rings true one-hundred years after being made. A rich woman steals a fur piece while a poor woman steals a loaf of bread for her starving child. In court, the rich woman gets off while the poor woman has her daughter taken away and is thrown in jail.