Salomy Jane

SALOMY JAME is an ambitious movie from the dawn of American feature production. Based, as it is, on a stage adaptation of a Bret Harte story -- with interpolations from other stories by that author -- it attempts to do too many things without sufficient focus.

Having seen several adaptations made in this period, I suggest there are several reasons for this, including techniques still too primitive, but mostly because these movies were probably not seen as the primary medium for the story -- it was probably meant for someone already familiar with the Harte story or perhaps the stage play. Given that the IMDb does not show a credit for Harte's writing in the last thirty years, the casual assumptions of the movie makers will be lost in the welter of characters, props and even stage dressing -- during an early scene set in a store my eyes kept being drawn to the immense variety of goods on the shelves.

This is a pity, because the print that turned up in New Zealand and was repatriated to the United States about 2010 is in gorgeous condition and features some work by future stalwarts in front of and behind the camera -- Jack Holt is a stunt double, William Nigh is an actor. Hal Mohr, however, is the cameraman, as he would continue to be for many a decade -- he would be the only write-in Oscar winner in the 1930s and was still working through the end of the 1960s.

Because of the absurd primacy given to Griffith's Birth of a Nation, it was long customary to pretend that full-length films were extremely uncommon before 1915. In fact of course, as more and more silent films become available, this has been shown to be completely false. By 1914, not only were all European countries turning out plenty of full-length feature but Japan, China, India and Latin America had all produced features at least of medium length (around 40 mins). In the US, the MPPC, sometimes known as the Edison Trust, spearheaded by Edison and Biograph, had done its damndest to stem the tide but not in fact with any marked success because the majority of companies no longer accepted its hegemony.

So in 1914 there were such films as Joseph in the Land of Egypt, Cinderella, Home Sweet Home (Griffith for Majestic), The Wrath of the Gods, Rip Van Winkle, The Wishing Ring, Martin Eden, Tillie's Punctured Romance, A Florida Enchantment, The Sign of the Cross. Many more films run about 40-45 minutes and I am sure the list could be extended and will be extended as more and more other features are "rediscovered" and restored. The question of running time (in minutes) is a bit illusory because it depends very much on running speed and the way the restoration of the film has been put together (credits, length of time allowed for intertitles etc). So a film that in its current runs 50 mins and another that runs 80 mins may in fact be pretty much the same length. The original films themselves varied considerably in how they dealt with peripheral or incidental material. In the case of this film, a very leisurely six or seven minutes to the visual introduction of all the characters, a common enough practice but rarely quite so extended.

Most of the early full-length features relied on traditional material and many were westerns, generally westerns of a certain literary turn - so absent from the list above, just in 1914, there was The Call of the North, The Squaw Mam (DeMille's first go at it), The Virginian, Te Bargain (William Hart's first feature) and The Spoilers as well as Salomy Jane. So there is nothing whatever exceptional about this film either in terms of its length or its content.

The quality of US features was still rather poor. Tourneur's The Wishing Ring is the only one that can bear comparison with Cabiria (Italy) or The Mysterious X (Denmark)or Mute Witnesses and The Child of the Big City(Russia) or Engelein (Germany) or La Fille de Delft (France/Belgium) or Le Roman d'un Mousse (France).

Early Hollywood filmmakers were more interested in the resume of prospective actors than the makeup of their ethnicity. And because film acting was considered to be less than an admired profession, Hispanic talent wasn't discouraged from employment. One of the earliest Latino stars hired by a movie studio was Beatriz Michelena, an international stage actress/singer living and working in the San Francisco area in the early 1910's. When a newly-formed studio was established in 1913 by a group of rich, prominent investors, Michelena was one of the first performers to be hired.

Based in San Rafael, The California Motion Picture Corporation had an objective to showcase the beauty and the history of the state. Its first production was a western, "Salomy Jane," starring Michelena as the title character. The motion picture was hailed by those who saw its October 1914 premier in a San Francisco hotel, and some who had seen the studio's body of work claim "Salomy" was its best.

Michelena was told her performance was on par with film's top star, Mary Pickford. The studio cast her in its next five pictures, but her demands for higher production values and her treatment as a "star" created greater expenses for the soon cash straped company. Her extravagances compounded by the studio's poor distribution network doomed the enterprise.

Michelena and her wealthy car dealership husband bought out the flailing studio and produced one movie which turned into a dismal failure. She took up the stage again, and never made another film. The studio's building with a vault filled with all her movies were set on fire when a group of kids lit fireworks inside the abandoned structure. Not one movie of hers survived the fire--until a copy was found in Australia in 1996 and fully restored.

This short can be found in the recently released DVD collection "Treasures of the West"---a collection of mostly short films from the earliest days of movies until 1938. "Salomy Jane" is one of the few full-length films included with the package. And, interestingly, it really is full-length--at 87 minutes--making it a VERY long film for its day.

For most folks today, "Salomy Jane" will be rather tough going. Although the camera-work and locations are nice, the style of the film leaves a bit to be desired. Like many films at the time, the intertitle cards OFTEN describe action about to happen (ruining any sense of anticipation) or describe people (such as saying one is 'no good') instead of showing that the person is shiftless. Now this is not to say it's a bad film--this sort of storytelling was common at that time. But it does detract a bit from the film. What IS nice, however, is the location shoot among the redwoods as well as having a heroine who is not just some whining girl but a woman of action and depth. For lovers of old silents, this is great stuff. For those not acquainted, you might want to try a few other films first due to the old fashioned (even for 1914) style.