The Female of the Species

As with most of Griffith's Biograph one-reelers, this film is melodramatic and moralistic. It tells the story of three women and a man marooned in the desert, trying to walk out. The man dies; acrimony between his wife and one of the women ensues; they find an orphaned indian baby and are reconciled by their mutual devotion to the maternal virtues. This is standard Griffith fare. The film is exceptional, though, for the quality of photography and composition. The clearly-drawn characters, and the emotional intensity revealed by the use of close-ups, looks forward to Griffith's use of these techniques in "Birth of a Nation" three years later.

Seven stars. Mainly for it's utter bizarreness. The set-up makes no sense. Why are these four people still there, in this scene of devastation? And the ensuing action is so arbitrary! I think this is the earliest substantial part I've ever seen Mary Pickford play. And she did the best job of conveying what she was up to. Claire McDowell, as 'The Miner's Wife', just seemed deranged. But that could have been the idea. Everyone else just showed up, and did random stuff. Okay, just sit back, and watch this surreal kaleidoscope of events swirl in front of you for 15 minutes. At that level, it was entertaining. But, no matter what, DON'T try to make any sense of it! Take a look at one of the oddest films Griffith ever made. 7 February 2024.

Some very good cinematic touches make this simple melodrama a good short feature. The story is simple and a bit too dependent on coincidence, but otherwise it is a skillfully made little film that will hold your attention. The plot concerns a small group of survivors from an abandoned mining town, who are making a desperate journey across the desert when tensions erupt and threaten all of their lives. The acting is quite good for the most part, and the cast includes Mary Pickford, though in a role quite different from those that would later make her famous. The filming was done with the old method of fixing the camera's field of reference for each scene, but Griffith did a lot to make up for it. In particular, the desert atmosphere is established very well through good backgrounds, blowing sand, and the like. It's a worthwhile film for anyone interested in these very old short features.

The Female of the Species is one of many remarkable Biograph shorts from the year 1912, and certainly represents a great leap forward in screen acting and direction of actors.

Griffith temporarily abandons his own rule of three-quarter length shots, with everyone cut off below the knees, instead framing the actors from the waist up in most shots. The crucial difference here is that the faces become much clearer, and the physical acting becomes that much less important. It's my belief that a large part of directing of performances comes from where you place the camera. Actors will play to the camera, so if they know their face is being focused on they will act with it. Griffith obviously cast the actors here for their faces too. Dorothy Bernard's face is a picture of distraught innocence, and Claire McDowell proves particularly good at conveying contempt. It's also interesting to note how the minor characters – the Indian family and the two cowboys – are filmed in Griffith's more familiar mid-shot, so they don't intrude upon the drama of faces going on between the three leads.

Everything else is left to Griffith's usual care in construction. The psychological impact of his staging of shots is important here. For the bulk of the film the actors are moving towards us – all the better to see those faces, of course, but the fact that they are constantly advancing upon the audience gives a more menacing quality to the film. In the final shot, the storyline resolved, they walk away from us, giving a sense of change and completion. Griffith was also by now adept at balancing and pacing a story. For example, he adds a moment of frantic action two-thirds of the way through, when the Indian father is shot. Griffith knows that the very slow pace of the film couldn't be maintained without the audience becoming bored, no matter how engrossing the acting is, so it was necessary to give the pace a little boost at that point.

From this point on, faces would become increasingly important in Griffith's work. He had been using close-ups for a while, but they were mostly functional ones, showing us objects or actions in more detail. Now, he was on the verge of showing how close-ups of faces could be used for emotional and psychological impact.

Three women find themselves stranded in the desert in this drama from D. W. Griffith, and to complicate matters one of them suspects another of having cheated with her husband shortly before his death. An unusually downbeat picture from Griffith that is loaded with atmosphere and a measure of tension, but which ultimately goes nowhere due to an incredibly weak ending.