The Musketeers of Pig Alley

In what may be the first mob film DW Griffith establishes some of the genre nuances that remain staples to this day. The Musketeers of Pig Alley is a tense action filled study in nostalge de la boule, father of The Roaring Twenties grandfather of Mean Streets.

A struggling musician on New York's Lower East Side goes on tour and and a local thug tries moving in on wife who in return rebuffs him. He robs the husband upon return but also gets her out of a jam at great cost. In the interim a gang war breaks out.

Musketeers presents inner city life in graphic terms of overcrowding and squalor. Griffith does a fine job of balancing the two major story lines that intersect and further helped along by the innocent beauty of Lillian Gish and charismatic evil of Elmer Booth for casting Cagney. There's a well done suspense building montage into a gunfight (including a jarring close-up of Booth) along with a series of other moments that must have given pause to the folks out in the country to visit the Big Apple. Pig Alley is an an American pioneer.

A pioneering short by filmmaking giant D.W. Griffith, "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" is a decent flick featuring one of the first depictions of gangsters onscreen and one of the early uses of follow focus. A series of events portray the life of the poor in all its rough messiness: death, arguments, gang wars, fistfights, shootouts, date rapes, crowded and dirty streets, shabby lodgings, etc.. Elmer Booth personified the image of the gangster of early film with his cocky and self-assured jauntiness setting the stage for future tough guys like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Lillian Gish was lovely as her usual ethereal self showing that she was Griffith's muse from the very start. Like most films of this vintage the main appeal is the view into the distant past, a time travel seeing people and their surroundings from long ago. Added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its historical importance, this is an interesting artifact from a bygone time that is still viewable for its historical interest and artistic quality.

I'm not going to go into the story because, in the IMDb plot summary, there is a thorough explanation of this tale provided by "American Mindscope and Biograph Co." It covers everything in this short, silent D.W. Griffth movie. I hadn't a silent film in a while, at least since watching most of Buster Keaton's and Harold Lloyd's comedies, so I had forgotten what a pretty woman Lillian Gish was in her youth. What confuses me, though, is that younger sister Dorothy is listed in the opening credits, not Lillian. What's the deal with that? Since Dorothy would have been about 14 at this time, it had to be Lillian in the lead role, as listed here by IMDb. At any rate, Lillian and the faces of the gangsters are really fun to watch. We get closeups of "The Snapper" and his really wild-looking sidekick, played by Harry Carey. Famous actor Lionel Barrymore also has a short role in year but, frankly, I didn't recognize him. By the way, I think Dorothy was one of the people in the crowd early on her brushes up against her sister, who then gives her a look. It was almost like an inside joke. Overall, this a bit confusing in parts because things happened pretty fast. I enjoyed the faces in here more than the story. A gave it a second look, trying to spot Dorothy and to understand the plot better. Afterward, however, I found this IMDb summary to be most helpful.

There had been movies about criminals before 1912, but they were solitary bad guys who worked their illegal activities alone. When D. W. Griffith''s "The Musketeer of Pig Alley" was released in November 1912, it set off a new genre in cinema: the gangster movie.

The term gangster derives from the term "gang," to which a criminal being a member of a criminal organization was a gangster. Here we have actor Elmer Booth, the Snapper Kid and the Musketeers gang leader (this is before Disney) wrecking committing illegal acts in a New York City neighborhood. His gang not only performs petty theft, like stealing the wallet of Lillian Gish's husband, but is in constant turf battles with rival gangs.

Elmer Booth's personality on screen as a cocky, bravado hoodlum served as a prime example for future actors who played gangsters to emulate, including James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Booth faced a brilliant future as an actor, but three years later he was killed in an automobile accident in a car driven by future "Dracula" director Tod Browning.

"Pig Alley" played a huge influence on director Martin Scorsese when he was creating his megahits "Goodfellas" and "The Gangs of New York."

The movie is also noted for filming the first "follow focus" shot in cinema. D. W. Griffith asked his cameraman, Billy Bitzer, to focus on Elmer Booth, leaving the background blurry as the gang members creep alongside the alley building walls. The story has it that Bitzer was confused how out of focus the frame should look like with just Booth sharply filmed. Supposedly Griffith took Bitzer to a local art museum posting artwork with fuzzy backgrounds the director was looking for (probably Impressionist paintings). The cameraman must have understood since the famous shot appears at the 13 minute mark of "Pig Alley," a sequence so influential that moviemakers duplicate the style today. Also known as rack focus for changing focal points, the technique is effective when performed properly.

If you have ever wondered where Jimmy Cagney got some of his mannerisms, watch this film.

Elmer Booth and Harry Carey, early in the movie, portray two New York gangsters so much in the same way Cagney would 20 years later that you almost don't need any other reason to watch "Musketeers."

Watch Carey, playing an un-named character, hitch up his pants. Just great!

This is available in a poor print at YouTube, but watching it there -- or trying to -- will either irritate you or, I hope, drive you to find a good copy to own.

I saw this many years ago in a Griffith retrospective in Los Angeles, and have been in awe of it ever since.

Like so much Mr. Griffith did, it just set the standard for great film-making.