Rose o' Salem Town

In many ways this is a standard story for Griffith, since its point is that people should be left alone, not subject to the whims of authority. In this case, authority casts a lecherous eye upon Dorothy West, but she will not give way, so she and her mother are found guilty of being witches. Happily, trapper Henry Walthall and his Indian buddies rescue her.

Griffith has pretty much settled on his methods of cross-cutting of simultaneous action to increase tension -- in this case they're getting ready to burn Dorothy at the stake for being a witch while Henry is rousing the Indians and leading them to her rescue. But he also visibly compresses time for maximum effect, and it becomes a tad bizarre. That's what happens when you're experimenting with techniques towards regularizing cinema's grammar: you try something and it doesn't necessarily work.

Walthall and West are a bit overwrought. Walthall would visibly improve shortly, but Miss West would eventually be relegated to supporting roles.

The time period in American colonies that continues to fascinate people these days is the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, which occurred in Salem, Massachusetts. The first movie to spotlight that crazy time was Biograph Studio's "Rose O'Salem-Town," D. W. Griffith's Sept. 1910 film, shot at the Delaware Gap in New Jersey.

Dorothy West plays the daughter of a fortune teller that makes the mistake by rebuffing the advances of the town's most influential official. She plays her role as someone who had a personality disorder. Despite men hitting on her, one wonders if they are attracted to her wild spirit--or know that her mental deficiencies makes her an easy catch. In any case, one suitor becomes her savior while the other is trying to internally condemn her.

The actress West had a brief movie career. West, who was the heroine in Griffith's "The House With Closed Shutters," left movies after World War One to entertain on the stage soldiers who remained in Europe. She eventually ended up in radio in 1928, where she was more well-known.

Many credit 1937's "Maid of Salem," with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray, as the very first movie revolving around that era. "Maid of Salem" may be the first feature film using the Salem Trial as a backdrop, but Griffith's 1910 fifteen-minute effort was the very first picture about Salem's witches--and the innocents who were unfairly executed.

The city of Salem, Massachusetts will be forever known as the place they tried and executed witches. I don't know if this is the locale. It's certainly the inspiration. The evil deacon wants to get his hands on a child he finds attractive. Her mother is a wonder, helping the sick and telling a few fortunes. She has the evil deck of 52. When the girl won't go for the guy, he accuses both of them of being witches. Of course, he is immediately believed. The mother is tortured and the girl is eventually set to be burned at the stake. While the conclusion is really stupid, it reminds us of the evils that Christianity, in the name of "right," has foisted on the world. Even today, in 2017, so much of organized religion is used as a weapon to destroy the lives of the defenseless. It is a sad state of affairs and appears to be getting worse every day.

Rose O'Salem Town (1910)

*** (out of 4)

Typical morality tale has a Deacon coming onto a "wild child" (Dorothy West) but after she rejects him he goes back into town saying that the girl and her mother are witches. It's up to a trapper (Henry B. Walthall) to try and race and save them before they're burned to death. If you've seen enough Griffith films then you know that he held religion very highly and many films of his would deal with the subject. If you've seen enough of his work then you also know that he isn't afraid to show the bad sides of stuff and that's pretty much what he does here because the man in power, the religious guy, also has enough hate in him to seek revenge with a lie and using his power over people to talk them into believing whatever he says. That's pretty much the entire message here. This certainly isn't one of Griffith's best film but there are enough good moments to make it worth viewing and especially since it lasts just over 10-minutes and the director keeps things moving at a fast pace. West is pretty good as the wild child as she has no problem showing that free spirit that the character has. Walthall is pretty good as well, although God knows he would certainly get better over time. The supporting stock players include George Nichols, Clara T. Bracy and Jack Pickford plays one of the Indians. As we'd see in many of the director's famous features, the ending uses editing to build up suspense as the trapper must race to where the women are being held in order to save them.