Sidney Olcott strays into Griffith territory with this US Civil War drama for Kalem, which means his heroine (Alice Hollister) is a lot feistier than those over at Biograph. Sadly, however, Olcott has no idea how to make his story come alive. To escape from his Confederate prison, Yankee spy J.J. Clark has only to punch a hole through the roof of his cell and dodge one guard. We spend more time watching him change clothes and Hollister bake a cake than we do his escape.
2 Reviews
Ahem!
boblipton16 June 2016
Here's a movie that has not survived well, even by the standards of 1912. J.J. Clark is a Union spy. He has put on blackface to disguise himself as he goes behind Confederate lines to.... Well, what he's supposed to discover is never made clear. Maybe it's to secure the crucial watermelon supply. Will lovely Alice Hollister help him escape?
Modern distaste for actors in blackface aside -- and Mr. Clark never looks like anything but some White jiving turkey to me -- the takeaway from this Kalem film is the attitude towards women. While over at Biograph, D.W. Griffith's attitude was still stuck somewhere. In the dreams of the antebellum South which his father had passed onto him, over at Kalem they were courting the modern female audience, showing how they could do things, with action movies from Gene Gauntier. In fact, Miss Gauntier starred in a series of movies about "the girl spy", who worked for the South, frequently wore trousers and never, to my knowledge, put on blackface.
Modern distaste for actors in blackface aside -- and Mr. Clark never looks like anything but some White jiving turkey to me -- the takeaway from this Kalem film is the attitude towards women. While over at Biograph, D.W. Griffith's attitude was still stuck somewhere. In the dreams of the antebellum South which his father had passed onto him, over at Kalem they were courting the modern female audience, showing how they could do things, with action movies from Gene Gauntier. In fact, Miss Gauntier starred in a series of movies about "the girl spy", who worked for the South, frequently wore trousers and never, to my knowledge, put on blackface.
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