The High Cost of Living

An old man accused of murder pleads for himself in this short subject. He tells the tale of how far he had fallen during a strike at the steel mill where he worked, and of a blow struck in anger.

I can certainly understand the anger that a strike can produce. One of my grandfathers was a union organizer; he was thrown into jail after he busted the head of a scab trying to cross the line. (The family story is that a friend came to tell my grandmother "Becky, Becky, your husband is lying in jail"; her reply was "He can lie in H**l for all I care.")

The acting is very broad in this movie, and the only known member of the cast and crew is director Alice Guy. She offers a couple of cinematic novelties. The titles in which the old man narrates the events are in non-rhyming couplets, which are occasionally clumsy. Of more interest is that the movie, except for the beginning and end in the courtroom, is told in flashback.

I can't think of an earlier film in which this was done -- which is probably more a statement about my leaky memory than film history. Still, it's murder and flashback structure. Add in the blank verse and you have, arguably, a very early precursor of the Poetic Realism roots of Film Noir.

Besides the Dickensian melodrama on poverty and a narrative involving union organizing and a suggestion of a strike after the protagonist is refused his protests to the boss, Alice Guy's Solax one-reeler "The High Cost of Living" is also interesting for a plot from 1912 that consists of a flashback as told by a character in his trial for murder in a courtroom. A rather routine device nowadays, but relatively uncommon in movies back then, although not unheard of. The self-explanatory "Fireside Reminiscences" (1908) comes to mind, and Thanhouser's "Just a Shabby Doll" (1913) even features a flashback-within-a-flashback.

Even the intertitles are in the "voice" of the tried storyteller. There's also a scene of him in prison where he's presented a letter and rather than get the usual insert shot of the letter's contents, we see a superimposed vision of it as if it's his interpretation of what he read. Turns out Guy was a good cinematic storyteller herself. Case closed.