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  In the first four parts of this series, we have traced D. W. Griffith’s initial exploration of the potential and limitations of film editing. Until now, Griffith’s films contained technical advances, but generally in the context of trite stories told through largely standardized direction. Here, though, for the first time in Griffith’s output we have movies in which technique contributes more to the overall impact than do the literary and theatrical elements. In these three movies, Griffith relies upon the unique artistic qualities of the film medium (and especially editing) rather than upon non-cinematic elements. Here is a description, adapted from the paper print. I have assumed that titles (omitted from the paper print) originally bridged the six obvious continuity gaps; these would account for the entire difference in length between the paper print and the advertised release footage.
The editing of this film is masterful because nearly every transition not broken by a title is laden with emotional content. Thus, the cut between shots 3 and 4, linking the wife’s receipt of the news of her husband’s shipwreck with her husband’s rescue, does not show the object of her thoughts, as so many commentators have claimed. Rather, with some irony, it indicates the opposite – that what she is thinking turns out not to be true. The transitions among shots 5, 6 and 7 are more complex. Shot 5 shows the husband alone with nothing to do, while shot 6 shows the wife rejecting a suitor, so the transition contrasts their social opportunities while at the same time drawing an sardonic parallel between their lonely status, the wife by choice and the husband by default. The theme of loneliness is given a further ironic twist in the very next transition between shots 6 and 7, in which the wife’s desire to be left alone is contrasted with the husband’s desperate attempts to attract the attention of rescuers. The same contrast and theme is reinforced by the similar transition between shots 10 and 11. The cut between shots 8 and 9 is Griffith’s most powerful to date. The shots themselves are stripped of nearly all action and are not at all essential to the plot. Rather, Griffith isolates the two characters and then compares them simply by editing their shots together, thereby implying an emotional bond that links them despite their geographic and societal separation. Both shots are close, so as to reduce our emotional distance, and are beautifully matched as complementary images – similar postures, but she bright against a dark background, he the reverse. Thus, for the first time, Griffith boldly foregoes plot altogether and uses editing solely to create a mood and thus enhance the theme. It is entirely appropriate that this pause in the action occurs at the mid-point of the film, thus lending a fine formal structural touch by lingering on the pivotal situation before proceeding to the denoument. In sum, After Many Years does not simply benefit from editing, but derives nearly all its thematic meaning from editing. Although it is still episodic and the end reverts to standard melodramatic convention, the central portion leaves no doubt that an artist was at work. (Incidentally, to counter any suspicion that Griffith was showing respect for a venerable cultural source (in this case, Tennyson’s The Guerilla (October 12 & 14) – Immediately upon completing After Many Years, Griffith embarked upon a chase film that, for sheer sustained suspense created through editing, would not be surpassed for years. Here is a somewhat condensed version:
A catalogue of factors that create the genuine excitement of this picture include the strategic placement and sheer number of the scenes of the wife in peril (which occur with increasing frequency as the tale progresses); her escape from room to room (each time enabling the peril to begin all over again); the breaks in the central action (shots 15 – 18 and 27 – 31), strategically timed to diminish the intensity so as to enable it to rise once more; the suspense generated by the excruciatingly detailed depiction of the impediments faced by the servant and then the husband in effecting her rescue; the unprecedented number of shots (44 in 14 minutes) and their extreme brevity toward the end, which abet a feeling of excitement; the nearly musical rhythm of the editing, which both melds the shots together and establishes a pattern that the occasional lengthier shots disrupt and thus draw our attention; the symbolic pans away from the house that underline the wife’s solitude (shots 2 and 14); and the reverse pans that emphasize the approach of danger (shot 8) and, ironically, her ultimate deliverance (shot 42). But perhaps the most remarkable feature is that for the first time Griffith devotes a film to pure action and suspense, shorn of the customary lingering farewell to launch the plot and the conventional final shot of a family embrace to restore social order. Rather, the movie begins with the husband already riding off and ends once the villain is slain, as if to emphasize that the real theme is not bravery, marital devotion, resistance to evil or any other abstraction, but rather pure visceral action. After the first half-minute we know something is amiss, after two minutes the danger is already present and with shot 14 the chase begins, consumes three-quarters of the entire picture and continues right up to the very end. For sheer concentration of action and sustained suspense, few Griffith productions – including many of his famous later ones – can compare. The Song of the Shirt (October 19 & 20) – At last, we come to the most remarkable film yet produced – by Griffith or anyone else. Here it is:
We can only imagine the stunned reaction of audiences to a movie that offended every ingredient of Victorian drama, to which all previous movies had clung – no hero is rewarded, no villain is punished, no societal norm is upheld, no humanistic value is advanced, no catharsis is achieved. Song of the Shirt is a pure tragedy, but without the obligatory conclusion that at least offers a feeling of hope or redemption – here, the sick woman dies alone, the cruel boss lives it up and as for the girl – well, we aren’t shown what happens to her, although we certainly can guess that it’s not good. Indeed, the end is so powerful for the very reason that, in lieu of the expected denouement of showing the girl entering the bedroom and collapsing in hysterics and grief, Griffith leaves us with a feeling of numb emptiness. By forcing us to imagine her fate, he creates a far more potent impact than any actual depiction could ever attain. (In contrast, recall that Behind the Scenes ended with a depiction of the outcome and upheld the redeeming notion of professional sacrifice.) Even more than the technical prowess with which he enriched many of his pictures, the mere fact that Griffith would dare to make such an iconoclastic movie of unrelieved grimness and unfilfilled audience expectations attests to his growing maturity. Even so, the scene selection and editing are extraordinary. Although Griffith still felt it necessary to depict the entire story without any gap in the action, note how short he cuts those shots that contribute little to the central plot (shots 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 16), so as to save film for more crucial matters. By contrast, it is significant where he places the emphases through shot length alone – and notably not only by dwelling upon the protagonist but upon the perversity of the lavish dinners, which continue well beyond the length needed to convey their essence, so as to enable our feelings of revulsion to fester over their endless extravagance. Yet going to the opposite extreme Griffith also manages to add a striking touch through the 1½ second shot 10, which is not only the briefest shot here but the shortest one in any of his movies to date. In terms of the plot it is wholly superfluous, since we already see the girl entering the sweatshop in shots 9 and 11 (which might have been a single take before shot 10 was inserted). The additional setup for shot 10 – and its extreme brevity – add a telling detail by suggesting her disorientation and anxiety over her final desperate attempt to find work. And by momentarily reversing perspective to that of the girl, Griffith makes sure we leave our role as objective observers to briefly identify with her and her compelling situation. The transition among shots 7, 8 and 9, contrasting the girl’s mission with the sick woman’s suffering, seems derived from the similar sequence in Behind the Scenes. But if we hesitate to consider this to be ideological editing (the juxtaposition of shots to create meaning inherent in neither alone), then no such reservation can apply to shots 13, 19 or 20. There, Griffith cuts directly to contrast the poverty, depression and helplessness of his vulnerable main character with the affluence, gaiety and frivolity of those who refused her appeal. These three shots stand apart from the story proper but instead function as bitter social protest that magnifies the girl’s plight. Thus, Griffith goes beyond After Many Years not only to transcend plot in favor of theme but to abandon continuity as well – a stride that paves the way toward abstract film in which plot is absent altogether and is arguably the purest form of cinematic art. That said, we must note that the power of these direct cuts was modified to some extent by titles, although neither their texts nor any indication of where they were inserted seems to have survived. (Since the release length ran over a minute longer than the paper print, there was room for a half-dozen.) We do not know whether they strengthened the film (by perhaps explaining the otherwise obscure meaning of shots 6, 15 and 16) or diluted the bold implications of the bare visuals. All we have is a review in the New York Dramatic Mirror of November 28, 1908 (reprinted in Stanley Kaufman’s American Film Criticism) which notes: The effectiveness of the story is enhanced by the insertion in the film of appropriate lines from the poem [by Thomas Hood], of which the following is not the least impressive: “Stitch – stitch – stitch! In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once with a double thread A shroud as well as a shirt.”This suggests that whatever titles had been used were cast along similarly poetic lines, providing an oblique commentary on the action that the direct visuals, unflinching approach and bold structure of this extraordinary movie otherwise clearly conveyed to its audience. These three films, all within the fourth month of Griffith’s career, clearly defeat the conventional view that at this early stage he was a primitive apprentice. Rather, despite his inexperience, he already produced some surprisingly mature results. Indeed, it was in part because of that very inexperience that he was able to fearlessly reach beyond the routine practices of his era to discover the expressive potential of film techniques.
Copyright 2010 by Peter Gutmann | ||||||||||||
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 copyright © 1998-2010 Peter Gutmann. All rights reserved. |
Having covered his first three months of filmmaking, we arrive at a point that represents both a summit of achievement and a plateau – three exceptional productions that require no defense and in which he defers further experimentation in order to consolidate his editing knowledge to date.
