To Save Her Soul

Because cinema began as a silent medium you didn't need to judge it on dialogue. Therefore, you could watch this short film with the sound turned down on your television set and be able to understand what is taking place just by the visual narrative. Usually, it is within the first ten minutes of a film that the story is established, but because this project only lasted for 11 minutes, you needed to be assimilated into the story within the first minute. Unfortunately, the 34 year old D.W. Griffith failed to sway me. I deliberately watched this without the sound and was bored to tears within the opening moments. I didn't care about the characters, and the story just wasn't my cup of tea.

Mary Pickford is a member of Pastor Arthur Johnson's choir. While she is practicing with the organist one day, a passing show biz mogul hears her and offers her a chance to sing in the big city. She accepts. When Johnson reads of her goings-on in the newspaper he goes to see for himself.

It's not one of Griffiths best movies of 1909, with a story that is melodramatic, and with Arthur Johnson playing a minister who seems to have never heard of anyone going to the dogs. Still, if you look for something to admire, you can find it, in Miss Pickfords performance in the beginning, in the way that Griffith can fill a space with a dozen people who act like a much larger crowd, and with Billy Bitzer's camerawork that illuminates the church with a glow.

It should also be noted that this story would have appealed much more to the audiences of 1909 than today's.