So much has been written about the work - and relative importance - of D.W. Griffith and Thomas H. Ince, that a detailed re-evaluation here would be rather pointless. The film histories are full of such discussions; so are our own previous program notes.

That D.W. Griffith was, and is, the greatest director that the cinema produced must be beyond question. Ince's stature has always been infinitely less, but his importance - as a showman and an efficient organiser rather than a creative craftsman - is sometimes minimised in favor of exaggerated praise heaped on his films themselves.

Tonight's program provides an interesting comparison of the two pioneer filmmakers, working on similar themes (The Civil War and the Old West) over the same period. However, it should be remembered that while this period was the peak of Ince's creativity, it was merely a formulative and experimental period for Griffith. Ince went on to bigger, longer and lesser pictures; Griffith matured to bigger, longer, and greater pictures.

While we have not selected tonight's films to prove any particular point - other than being the best of their kind available - the films do in themselves point out the basic differences in approach. Griffith was all for technique and the maximum of excitement that could be derived from the exploitation of that technique. As you will see, his films are built more on simple situations rather than plots; situations that are developed steadily to a climax of tremendous power. With Ince, however, the story is the thing. The excitement is there, and the spectacle too - exceedingly well done spectacle into the bargain - but there is a minimum of absolute creativity. At first one is impressed by the apparent "maturity" of Ince's stories over Griffith's. They seem to have more depth, and their often starkly tragic dénouements indicate a commendable attempt to break away from routine. But only at first ... when one after another of Ince's films comes to an (often unnecessarily) unhappy ending, one realises that Ince is playing for shock effect in his plots just as Griffith is playing for suspense in his editing.

In all film controversy, one has to take sides - and we of course are essentially for Griffith. Perhaps therefore it is unfair to make any further comment at all, and leave it to the films themselves to help you make up your mind!

HIS TRUST (Griffith, 1911, with Wilfrid Lucas, Dell Henderson, Claire McDowell)

Griffith's own synopsis of this film started out with the sentence: "In every Southern home there was the old trusted body-servant whose faithful devotion to his master's family was extreme to the event of even laying down his life, if required." Griffith, looking backwards nostalgically, seemed to be intimating that the old pre-Civil War South was happy and peaceful, despite the cloud of slavery. Griffith, looking backwards

done, cunningly suggesting a whole mansion in flames even though only a burning porch is shown. (Fire scenes were a big exploitation asset in those days, and were often used in the advertising the way a star's name was later. Often three scenes of the fire, labeled "Before," "During" and "After" provided the sole advertising copy – and when the Powers Studio burned down in 1911, the production supervisor made sure it was all captured on film!) His Trust finishes on a note surprisingly like that of part one of Gone with the Wind– the war still in progress, the heroine finds temporary refuge and pauses to regain strength for the battle still ahead. A sequel was made, a rather maudlin affair of George's continued sacrifices through the years to educate the daughter of his beloved old master.

SILENT HEROES (Ince, 1913, with Tom Chatterton, Estelle Allen)

Lincoln's stricture was that the Sotuh be treated as though "it had never been away"; Griffith and Ince went him one better by treating it as though it had never been lost. Here once again, the Yankees take quite a beating at the hands of the Confederates – via some stunningly photographed battle scenes. A linking plot concerns a Southern youth's attempt to prove that he is not a coward. For the hero to prove his bravery became somewhat of a standard plot in Civil War dramas of the day, although somehow cowardice became an important issue only when Southern honor was at stake. It took The Red Badge of Courage to concern itself seriously with Northern cowardice. Tom Chatterton, a likeable hero who was still going strong in movies until the late 40's, probably also directed this film.

IN THE TENNESSEE HILLS (Ince, 1913, with Charles Ray and Enid Markey; two reels)

Although a trifle slow-moving, this little western is a dramatic and exciting affair, with some distinctly unusual situations. Although not strictly a western due to its Southern locale, it certainly come sunder that collective heading, and seems to recreate with remarkable accuracy the rough and hard spirit of the times. In their unglamorous backgrounds – and in the realistic flavor of old Inceville – Ince's westerns do have a certain documentary aspect in their depiction of an old West that, after all, was not so many years away at the time. Perhaps one of the greatest (and least-noted) contributing factors to this definite realism was the preponderance of dust. Dust in the town, on the trails, behind men as they walk, and behind horses as they gallop. This was not a contrived effect. Film-makers had not yet cottoned on to the trick of wetting down the ground before shooting to eliminate most of this dust.

FIGHTING BLOOD (Griffith, 1911, with Robert Harron, Florence La Badie, Kate Bruce).

Little-known, this is one of the early Griffith masterpieces – a brilliant depiction of an Indian raid on a settler's cabin, the unequal struggle, and the gradual triumph of the whites as the cavalry race to the rescue. This is a perfect example of Griffith's "situational" thrillers. It is also an interesting blueprint of so many things to come – from Bobby Harron's shapeless straw hat (later a minor trademark of Griffith) to the shrewd interpolation of "human interest" via amusing – and sympathetic – children. Griffith had an effective habit of increasing tension by showing children in danger – both from the enemy, and from their own parents, to prevent their falling into enemy hands. The whole climax to this film, complete with magnificent panoramic shots of action by Bitzer, is very much of an exercise in preparation for ht similar climax in The Birth of a Nation when the Klan rushes from Piedmont to rescue the beleaguered Cameron family.

Another Ince film much in the mould of Silent Heroes - great battle scenes, and stark story elements. Individually these films are quite remarkable; collectively they have a "sameness" that did not mark the work of Griffith. However, since Ince's "sameness" is still of a pretty high order, one hardly has cause for complaint. Ince here takes rather definite sides against the Confederates! The heroine, played by Mildred Harris, seems to be somewhat patently imitating Mary Pickford -- and the Confederate commander, of course, looks like Robert E. Lee.

THE WOMAN (Ince, 1913, directed by Charles Giblyn); with Leona Hutton, Richard Stanton.

Using an involved marital drama as the peg on which to hang his action, Ince presents in The Woman one of the first recreations of the famed Cherokee Strip landrush. (Unless we are very much in error, the very first had been done only a year earlier by Vitagraph). The rush itself, and the events leading up to it - and following it - are staged with quite amazing background detail and authenticity; one might almost be watching unrehearsed newsreel footage of the event. As a historical comment, it's worth noting that although Arizona (the setting of the story) had been organised as a territory in 1863, it had been admitted to the union only one year before this film was made. As evidence of how carefully these Ince westerns were made, it's also worthy of comment that The Woman was in production for a period of nine days; even assuming that the unit ceased work over a weekend (and it probably didn't) this still leaves seven shooting days -- longer in fact than was spent over the average 5-reel talkie sound "B" western, some of which were turned out in 3 days! As an extra in the saloon scenes, you'll notice Bob Kortman, one of Hart's favorite villains, and still active until a few years ago. Currently he is employed as a janitor at the Screen Director's Guild.

THE LAST DROP OF WATER (Griffith, 1911, with Blanche Sweet, Charles West, Joseph Graybill)

Very much of a precursor to The Covered Wagon, this Griffith saga of Indiana and pioneers has a good deal more excitement than Cruze's epic, if less poetry. Cruze cared little for action as such, disposed of it as quickly an possible, and made no attempt to build excitement via cross-cutting and camera placement, the way Griffith does here. No classic, The Last Drop of Water (its title, inspired, incidentally, by the poem dealing with the battlefield death of Sir Philip Sydney) is a solidly made and quite spectacular little western. Joseph Graybill, as the drunken husband, was rather too literally type cast unfortunately - only a year or two later he died of acute alcoholism.

General comments: On the historical accuracy of these subjects, we are perhaps not qualified to comment ... apart from the general tendency to keep the South on the winning side, and Ince having given his Southern guerillas some cannons (in Silent Heroes) which were not yet then in use, there seems little to argue with!

As to the completeness of the prints: to the best of our knowledge, our prints are absolutely complete with the following four exceptions:

THE LAST DROP OF WATER: due to negative deterioration, one short scene in the middle has been permanently lost. This showed Charles West leaving the wagon train to search for water. The almost full-reel length of the print indicates that this must have been a very short scene, with little else involved.

THE DRUMMER OF THE EIGHTH and PAST REDEMPTION: a number of scenes are missing from these two prints - usually extensions of existing scenes, so actually nothing basically is missing, except for an episode in Past Redemption which showed the heroine overhearing the village women gossiping about her, and engaging in a brief fight with the ringleader.

THE BATTLE - no footage at all is missing, but there are a number of awkward cuts in scenes between Charles West and Blanche Sweet in her cabin. These jump-cuts are due to deteriorated titles that are missing.

It is also worth noting that in the case of FIGHTING BLOOD and THE LAST DROP OF WATER, the titles are not the original Griffith titles, but new ones that were inserted by Nathan Hirsch who reissued the films, much to Griffith's dismay, after Griffith was established as a top-flight spectacle director in 1915-16. Hirsch padded the films with over-lengthy titles which took so long to read that the one-reelers were now literally two-reelers. Most of these phoney new titles have been eliminated from our prints, and only those which appeared to be repeats of the old titles have been retained.

And harking back far a moment to the first film on our program, His Trust, here's an extract from the review in Moving Picture World ...

This (story) in no way exaggerates the self-sacrificing love of the man for his master...the Biograph players have told a story graphically and with dramatic force. They have reproduced accurately conditions which actually existed in thousands of instances all ever the South while the war raged, and at its close. And they have done it so well that it holds the attention of the audience from beginning to end.

It's also interesting to record an unwitting bit of racism which appears in the original synopsis... the anti-Griffith brigade can of course make wholesale capital of this, but since they have been doing so anyway for the past 40 years, this added anecdote cannot add much fuel to their fire. The synopsis refers to the closing scene in which the negro hero is overcome by emotion, and "tears run down his black but honest cheeks!!"