The Painted Lady

This is an incredible short by D.W. Griffith, featuring one of his most popular female actresses at the time, Blanche Sweet. Her portrayal of a young, repressed minister's daughter who goes insane after shooting a man she loved to protect her father's wealth, is outstanding and quite modern for the time. The camera doesn't give extreme closeups on this one, but Blanche's face is so expressive that they weren't needed and might actually have detracted from her performance. When someone goes insane we don't necessarily WANT to be too close up, but wish to maintain our distance from the descent, so that we aren't taken down too!

I recognized some later stars as well in bit parts, including Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Bobby Harron, and Harry Cary, and of course Kate Bruce is always effective in Griffith's short films, even in small roles like this one. Hers is really the last face we see in this poignant film as the camera fades.

After a year or two of working with very small casts and perfecting his direction of actors, Griffith was by this point starting to work his way back towards the larger scale pictures, but still retaining the intimate, human focus. The Painted Lady demonstrates how he could make such an individual drama against the backdrop of crowds and moments of action.

This is a film about madness and isolation. Griffith demonstrates that isolation in a crowd shot early on. As opposed to the rather cluttered and confusing crowd scenes of Griffith's earliest works, the focus here is very clear. Blanche Sweet literally stands out from the crowd, a passive and solitary figure against a backdrop of much activity and excitement. Later, he repeatedly uses the very plain bridge location which forces us to focus totally upon her.

Although the Painted Lady does contain an action sequence of the kind that might normally be the climax of a Biograph short, Griffith instead makes it the catalyst for the final act. He doesn't dwell on it, and so it doesn't overwhelm the second half of the film. The slowness of the final scenes forms a balance with the first half, and they have a greater impact as a result.

Prior to this, while the acting in Griffith's shorts was becoming increasingly naturalistic, his actors still often slipped into over-the-top pantomiming when their characters' emotions ran high. Here however, in a picture that has a lot of scope for melodrama with its murder and madness, Sweet surprisingly manages to keep it relatively real. Importantly Griffith also encourages a deep performance from her by doing very long takes of her madness scenes.

The Painted Lady has aged better than most Griffith pictures, and is still very effective today mainly thanks to Blanche Sweet's acting. It goes to show that the depiction of a deranged loner unable to connect with society goes back a lot further than Travis Bickle.

Do appreciate silents and also old short films. Some of the best came from DW Griffith in the 1910s. He was not one of my favourite directors, but his short and feature films are really well worth seeing (the best musts) and he was an interesting director. Two of his best ever short films came from 1912, one being 'The Mothering Heart' and the other being the more ground-breaking 'The Musketeers of Pig Alley'. Both highly recommended.

'The Painted Lady' isn't recommended as enthusiastically. It is definitely interesting and there is a good deal to like about it, it is also a lot better than the rating here suggests. 'The Painted Lady' at the same time is not one of Griffith's best short films and nowhere among the best of his entire filmography, and is somewhat uneven. It's well directed, looks good and has a great lead performance, but the story and messaging are rather patchy in my view.

Am going to start with the good. The best thing about 'The Painted Lady' is the deeply felt and never over-melodramatic (something that could have easily been the case with this premise) performance of Blanche Sweet, who has such telling eyes and affecting facial expressions. Griffith's visual directing is very accomplished and he has a good eye for atmosphere.

Furthermore, 'The Painted Lady' looks pretty good visually, and is designed and photographed beautifully and atmospherically. A lot is packed in and it doesn't get dull, also thought it starts great.

However, it is hard to not wish that the second half lived up to it or at least was as strong. For me sadly, the second half felt very muddled and rushed. Like there was too much going on in a too short space of time, which is not usually the case with Griffith's short films and the coherence is affected as a result. Some of the goings on in the house are downright odd in a way that felt overdone.

While the messaging is well intended, it is also rather heavy-handed and feels out of date. While the rest of the acting is competent enough (nobody or nothing is terrible), nobody else is on Sweet's level and lacks her subtlety.

Overall, decent if patchy. 6/10.

Miss Blanche Sweet's portrayal of a mad girl in this picture seems to reach a higher plane of art than any of her previous characterizations, and she has done good work in many diverse roles. The film presents a psychological study of character dramatically, and gives a fresh criticism of life. The subtlety of it makes it a hard picture to comment on; one hesitates as before jumping into a very deep pool. But very crudely we may say that it draws for us a not very well balanced girl. She is somewhat morbidly conscientious and, consequently, not popular; but the humanity of her heart, as shown by her longing for friends, her longing to be understood, makes us deeply interested in her. Very logical is her reaching out to her new friend, her first sweetheart, and since he is what he is, a tragedy of some sort is imminent. The suddenness with which it comes shatters her mind. It is a picture that most certainly ought to be liked. No mechanically working mind could possibly have conceived it and we commend it as a work of art. A strong offering. - The Moving Picture World, November 9, 1912

While a young lady contemplated the advantages of make-up a man contemplated how he could get access of an old man's business secrets.

In "The Painted Lady" The Older Sister (Blanche Sweet) eschewed make-up while The Younger Sister (Madge Kirby) had all the boys in the yard by virtue of her liberally using her war paint. But not all of the men flocked to The Younger Sister. At least one man, The Stranger (Joseph Graybill), was attracted to The Older Sister. Too bad his aims were criminal in nature. He was using the Older Sister as a means to get access to her father's business secrets.

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