THE NEW SCHOOL

FILM SERIES 52: Program #5

March 21, 1986

EAST COAST (NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA, MAINE) SILENTS

Piano Score arranged and played by STUART ODERMAN

SOMETHING IN HER EYE (Lubin, 1914) and HIS LUCKY STRIKE (Lubin, 1915)

App. 10 mins each. Both starring Oliver Hardy

While I have considerable (and lengthy) documentation on these two rare shorts, space precludes reproduction here, but I will try to issue additional separate notes for these interested later in the season. In the meantime, apart from being the earliest Oliver Hardys we've ever seen, they're also surprisingly good. (There is a third one available too, of lesser quality but still of some interest, that we'll probably get to later). Clearly Hardy was being offered as an imitation Fatty Arbuckle (just as later there'd be imitation Oliver Hardys!) yet there's a pleasing lack of standardisation — the Hardy character is different every time — and also Hardy is a far less vulgar, far more appealing character than Arbuckle was at that time. (Arbuckle was not yet being allowed to direct himself, and was being wasted in crude if fast slapstick). The first of the two is fairly traditional slapstick, but the second has a far subtler plot than one tended to find outside of the John Bunny films. Print quality, from aged but remarkably preserved nitrate, is variable, but we're lucky to have them at all. Although many of the Lubins were shot in Florida, Philadelphians have seen these two shorts and identified some of the locations as being in or around that city.

To James Card, long-time curator of George Eastman House in Rochester, goes the credit for rediscovering one of the major and totally forgotten talents of the early silent period, John H. Collins, and for resurrecting four of his early features for Edison and Metro, all of them starring his wife Viola Dana. (There is insufficient space here for a full appraisal and history of Collins' work and importance, but these interested are referred to my book American Silent Film where several pages are devoted to him). Collins, Dana, Walker and cameraman John Arnold all made the trek from Edison to Metro in 1916; Arnold (whose expert camerawork is evidenced by tonight's film) was taken on reluctantly by Metro and only at Collins' insistence, yet went on to become the head of Metro's camera department. While certainly Griffith's The Birth of a Nation towers above all else as the most dynamic and innovative film of 1915, we have become increasingly aware over the past few years that other directors were making major contributions in that year too: deMille, Tourneur, Walsh, Raymond West, and quite certainly John Collins. Although Collins' films did receive excellent reviews from perceptive critics of the time, he died tragically in the influenza epidemic of 1919; had he lived to make bigger films in the 20's, his reputation would have been secure, and his earlier films remembered. One wonders just how many other directors of Collins' calibre may likewise be unknown by ill-fate or the vagaries of preservation? Certainly Children of Eve is a solid lesson that nobody can afford to generalise, as we always have about the Edison company, insisting that their films, ground out like so many sausages, had no importance, and that their methods discouraged the development of serious directors. As a generalisation, it's true — any average Edison one-reeler of 1915 has the overall stature and look of a 1910 film and is incredibly primitive alongside Children of Eve. But no company that produced a film like Children of Eve (and others by Collins) should be dismissed so casually.

Children of Eve is one of the first feature-length social pretest films, although such themes were not new and had formed the basis of many shorter films. Basically an anti-child labor film, it is largely inspired by the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist fire in Washington Square, just a few years earlier (some 146 workers were killed) although in actual specific detail, it more resembles a later and somewhat less serious fire in New Jersey. Although we have run a few 1915 and earlier features, most of our silents come from a later period, and those not familiar with the early features may find the reliance on Dickensian plot coincidence lacking in sophistication. But it should be remembered that the early cinema was rooted in both Victorian morality and Victorian literary traditions; indeed, one of its greatest historical values is in reminding us of those links. In 1915 after all, we were much closer in time to Dickens' writing than we are today to Scott Fitzgerald's. Had the cinema arrived a few years earlier, or had Dickens been a few years younger, this is precisely the kind of story that he would have written specifically for the screen.

Viola Dana's lively and subtle performance predates in many ways Mae Marsh's in Intolerance, and the film can also be seen as a forerunner to Walsh's Regeneration. (Miss Dana is still alive and feisty in her mid 80's). One of the basic flaws of the Edison films was the way their directors merely illustrated the "scripts" (usually just two or three pages listing the shots) but didn't flesh them out. Here Collins and Dana flesh them out with a vengeance; after Dana walks off jauntily with a boy friend, the camera lingers long enough to show a child imitating her walk. Later, when a terse title doesn't have the wordage necessary to do more than say that a woman of Dana's type is needed to infiltrate the factory, Dana's body language, re-arranging of her hair etc., conveys quite clearly that she is to pose as a much younger person. Robert Walker, familiar through his seedy villain roles in scores of talkie westerns and serials, reminds us here that he wasn't too far removed from Griffith's leading man of the period, Robert Harron. The climax, surprising and unconventional, features a remarkably realistic fire scene. It was in fact, though deliberately staged, the real thing. An. old warehouse in New Jersey was set afire - but it burned rather too well, and the cameraman, atop the building shooting down, narrowly escaped with his life and his camera was a casualty!