They tell a lot of whoppers in here, everything from fictitious people and inciting events that never happened to a secret passage in the fort. There's a lot of propaganda here too (and let's just not get into the number of coonskin hats). There's also plenty to offend modern sensibilities today, as almost every North American stereotype of Mexicans is displayed, as is Douglas Fairbanks...in blackface.
That said, this first feature film (a five-reeler) about the Alamo (the very first Alamo film came out four years earlier but has been lost) tells us a lot about how people less than 80 years after the event and less than 70 years after the end of the Mexican-American War remembered it. Bowie, Travis, and Crockett are there, of course, but the viewpoint character is actually Deaf Smith (here called Silent Smith).
I didn't recall hearing about Deaf Smith before, but after looking him up on the Net, realize just how important he was in that struggle. The chief reason for his importance -- his marriage to a Latina and the contacts in both American and Mexican circles that enabled him to earn the nickname "The Texas Spy" -- isn't in the film, but at least they acknowledged his presence at the scene and the importance of his role then. The resemblance between his portrait and the actor who plays him, Sam De Grasse (who Fairbanks fans will remember fondly for his portrayal of Prince John in "Robin Hood"), is also remarkable.
The camera techniques are excellent, too, and must have been groundbreaking in 1915. There are two challenges here: scenes where large numbers of actors, including soldiers on horseback, must move through small spaces (the streets of San Antonio) without overwhelming the audience, as well as battle scenes where a wide open expanse of land and sky has to be filled up with an attacking Mexican Army. They solved the former by imaginative camera angles of the big picture interlaced with multiple, quickly moving close-ups of various important characters in the street during the crowd scenes. They did the best they could with the latter, including a fish-eye view with wide borders during some of the charges on the Alamo, but they really could have used more actors out there to convey the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Mexican forces. Considering it was 1915, though, what they did was very impressive.
I like the way the end, after Santa Anna's men have broken into the fort, is filmed as a series of separate fights that fade into darkness. One should point out, though, that in the real battle, Santa Anna did let all the women and children go.
At the very end, they also do something interesting with the flags that reminds me a little of the way a modern movie about the Civil War, "Gods And Generals," opens.
I saw the print that is available at the Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org. It's not of the best quality, with some but not all of the title cards at the end of the original reels still in the picture, and also with some break-up at the end. It also has a good sound track that's generally very epic and powerful, but it isn't tied in to what is showing on the screen. Something more in sync with the film's scenes and with a few, lighter human melodies and country refrains reminiscent of the era, probably would enhance the experience.
That said, this first feature film (a five-reeler) about the Alamo (the very first Alamo film came out four years earlier but has been lost) tells us a lot about how people less than 80 years after the event and less than 70 years after the end of the Mexican-American War remembered it. Bowie, Travis, and Crockett are there, of course, but the viewpoint character is actually Deaf Smith (here called Silent Smith).
I didn't recall hearing about Deaf Smith before, but after looking him up on the Net, realize just how important he was in that struggle. The chief reason for his importance -- his marriage to a Latina and the contacts in both American and Mexican circles that enabled him to earn the nickname "The Texas Spy" -- isn't in the film, but at least they acknowledged his presence at the scene and the importance of his role then. The resemblance between his portrait and the actor who plays him, Sam De Grasse (who Fairbanks fans will remember fondly for his portrayal of Prince John in "Robin Hood"), is also remarkable.
The camera techniques are excellent, too, and must have been groundbreaking in 1915. There are two challenges here: scenes where large numbers of actors, including soldiers on horseback, must move through small spaces (the streets of San Antonio) without overwhelming the audience, as well as battle scenes where a wide open expanse of land and sky has to be filled up with an attacking Mexican Army. They solved the former by imaginative camera angles of the big picture interlaced with multiple, quickly moving close-ups of various important characters in the street during the crowd scenes. They did the best they could with the latter, including a fish-eye view with wide borders during some of the charges on the Alamo, but they really could have used more actors out there to convey the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Mexican forces. Considering it was 1915, though, what they did was very impressive.
I like the way the end, after Santa Anna's men have broken into the fort, is filmed as a series of separate fights that fade into darkness. One should point out, though, that in the real battle, Santa Anna did let all the women and children go.
At the very end, they also do something interesting with the flags that reminds me a little of the way a modern movie about the Civil War, "Gods And Generals," opens.
I saw the print that is available at the Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org. It's not of the best quality, with some but not all of the title cards at the end of the original reels still in the picture, and also with some break-up at the end. It also has a good sound track that's generally very epic and powerful, but it isn't tied in to what is showing on the screen. Something more in sync with the film's scenes and with a few, lighter human melodies and country refrains reminiscent of the era, probably would enhance the experience.