The Museum of Modern Art rewrites a bit of early Hollywood film history with impressive restorations of one of few innovative directors to work at Thomas A. Edison’s film company. (MoMA owns more than 400 original Edson nitrate negatives which can make for startlingly fresh prints at best; reasonably watchable, if occasionally incomplete at worst.) As history and (now & then) art, especially valuable since the Edison films (1890s - 1918) are largely ignored even in Early Cinema study. (Two exceptions: Edwin S. Porter’s THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY/1903 and LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN/1905; the latter too often seen in a long discredited MoMA edit that ‘modernized’ the original cutting continuity.) Recently, six films directed by John H. Collins, made from these Edison negatives, show him pushing against arbitrary company limitations. Beginning with MAKING A CONVERT/’14, a sort of silent film Public Service Announcement about trolley car safety, sweetly disguised as a single-reel comic romance; and on to near feature-length dramas snuck thru the front office as three or four single-reel serials. The last of these new restorations an antebellum tragic romance, THE PLOUGHSHARE, stuffing two murders, suicide, unpunished villainy, slave brutality (by a slave owning kid with a whip!), miscarriage of justice, loveless marriage, brotherly love denied, and tragically thwarted romance in only 4 reels (about 50 minutes*). Yet, it must have looked trivial next to BIRTH OF A NATION out the same year. One of these films, THE PORTRAIT IN THE ATTIC, with future wife, actress Dana Viola, especially nice, as a motherless daughter refuses to acknowledge her father’s new wife until a crisis makes her need a mother’s touch! With a ghostly dead mother giving her blessing to step-mom. Collins’ films move a bit faster and have more editing than other Edison films of the period (but then, how many has anyone seen?), and often feature remarkable lighting effects. One birthday celebration manages to show progressively dimming light as each cake candle is blown out. In another film, a romantic reunion plays out entirely in silhouette. And how quickly acting improves in a couple of years, with gestural indicators falling by the wayside. Soon, Collins & Viola would head to Metro Pictures where they didn’t have to fight for longer running times. Are any available to see? And how far did Collins get before his life was abruptly cut short by the 1918 flu epidemic. Viola continuing on screen well into the early sound period. The other titles restored: LAST OF THE HARGROVES (a Hatfield & McCoy feud story of the kind Buster Keaton parodies in OUR HOSPITALITY*); WHAT COULD SHE DO? (department store employee pilfering leads to a detective job for a salesgirl, with Viola in extreme close up so we can read her lips: ‘I . . . Won’t . . . Tell!’); THE SLAVEY STUDENT (brother & sister orphans find redemption after he’s mistakenly jailed and she runs into the real criminal on a date). Collins’ films don’t match the best from Europe (or of Griffith) at the time, but his early death lends a ‘What If’ quality to what we do have.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *If running times seem long considering the reel count, it’s because 24 fps wouldn’t become standardized till sound (each 1000 foot reel = ten minutes). But silent camera cranking speeds varied widely. And with persistence of vision kicking in as low as 16 fps, ambitious directors could squeeze an extra two to four minutes of screen time per reel at the slower cranking speed. Save on film stock while tricking the front office!
LINK: *Especially clear in the dramatically 'straight' prologue of Keaton’s OUR HOSPITALITY/’23. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/01/our-hospitality-1923.html
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