The Virginian

This was Cecil B. DeMille's first picture as sole credited director. Like the better known yet inferior Squaw Man, which he co-directed with Oscar Apfel, it is a western starring Dustin Farnum. Unlike its predecessor, The Virginian bears the hallmarks of having been made by a classy albeit inexperienced director, and the definite DeMille style is beginning to emerge.

Part of The Virginian's superiority over The Squaw Man is its tighter storyline. This is probably helped by the fact that it unswervingly follows genre convention. The western may have been in its infancy, but even in 1914 the iconic cowboy and his inevitable shootout with the villainous outlaw were already synonymous with it. One factor which characterises this as an early western is the theme of an outsider coming to the west – in this case the love interest Molly. At this time the west was not yet old, and it was an exotic place for easterners to discover. There's already something of a shift going on here though as the hero himself is an established westerner. I have to say, Dustin Farnum looks a lot more comfortable here playing the genuine cowboy as oppose to the English gentlemen traveller of The Squaw Man.

Right from the start, Cecil DeMille differed somewhat in approach from DW Griffith in that he was most concerned with what went on in individual shots rather than the relationship between them, favouring long takes and rich compositions. He shows some promise here, making good aesthetic use of depth and balance, although he's not quite there yet when it comes to clarifying action and character. For example, he introduces the villain Trampas with a title card, then confuses us by showing three men sitting round the table. Our eyes will probably be drawn to the man on the left with the large sombrero, but it's only thirty seconds or so into the scene that we realise it's the man on the right who is Trampas.

Some more typical – and innovative – DeMille touches emerge later. DeMille was one of the first filmmakers to convey psychology through technique. For example, when Farnum and his pal Steve are fondly remembering their adventures together, he literally shows their memories on screen in a superimposed image. Of course, this technology had been around since Melies' heyday fifteen years earlier, but DeMille is using it to photograph thought. You don't see anything like that in the work of Melies, or Griffith for that matter.

By and large however, De Mille is still taking his lead from Griffith, which is fair enough as Griffith was the undisputed master at the time. His staging and use of close-ups looks very much like that in the Biograph shorts. There's also some Griffith-style parallel editing to contrast the diverging paths of Steve and Farnum, when the former falls in with the cattle rustlers and the latter falls in with the school ma'am. The later DeMille tended to keep individual scenes intact. However, it would not be long before fully-fledged DeMillean classics such as The Cheat would appear.

Cecil B. DeMille's second feature film was this oldest of westerns where a whole lot of what became cliché was original. Owen Wister's novel The Virginian was the first of the adult western fiction that spawned the careers of such writers as Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. Previous to that the penny dreadfuls of the 19th century from such hack writers as Ned Buntline covered that field.

A lot of the principal players from DeMille's first film The Squaw Man carried over into The Virginian including star Dustin Farnum who played The title role and his wife Winifred Kingston who played the first of westerns crinoline heroines schoolmarm Molly Wood. A cliché in the making.

The story is familiar to everyone. Kingston has come west out of boredom with the east and becomes the new school teacher in a rough and very rural part of Wyoming territory. The mysterious man known only as The Virginian is your cowboy hero with a bit of rough humor to him. There's a scene here about how he and his playful pals switch babies in a make shift nursery and how couples at a square dance all go home with the wrong babies. Can't see Gary Cooper or Joel McCrea doing that.

But the basic plot we know is there. The Virginian's pal Steve after a warning from Farnum gets caught cattle rustling and Farnum is forced to hang him. He also swears to get Trampas played by Billy Elmer and Trampas who already has a grudge against The Virginian is out to get him as well.

It turns out like you would expect, but this was the mold they all came from.

Interesting silent from the very early days of Universal, based on a popular Owen Wister novel and perhaps partly scripted by him. What impressed me the most about it was the command that director Cecil B. DeMille has over feature editing at this early stage. His handling of the principal actors is not particularly outstanding; and DeMille would not further distinguish himself in this area as his long career unfolded. But DeMille understands how to intercut separate scenes so they fold into one another and move the story forward. Also DeMille shows skill in coordinating crowd scenes, which would certainly serve him well in his later biblical epics. In these respects "The Virginian" is one of the most advanced features of it's time, at least of the ones from 1914 which we can still see today.

Virginian, The (1914)

** (out of 4)

Dustin Farnum plays a cowboy from Virginia who goes out West with his best friend but a woman (Winifred Kingston) comes between them. To make things even worst, the best friend gets caught up with some castle thieves at the same time the Virginian is hired to bring the gang down. This was DeMille's second feature coming after the same year's The Squaw Man, which he would go onto remake twice. This is certainly a step down from his previous film but there's still some mild entertainment to be had here. The young DeMille hadn't came down with any of his trademark style at this point in his career but he does a good job handling the story and keeping it moving. The film runs a short 53-minutes and that time goes by real fast without any down time. The cast is pretty good and that includes leading man Farnum who was also in the director's first film. There really isn't too much action until the end but there's still some fine humor to keep the film moving.

First of two silent versions, this one is directed by C. B. DeMille, stars Dustin Farnum as the Virginian, and runs just under an hour. Compared to the 1929 Gary Cooper version, this one isn't bad, although Farnum probably could have dropped a few pounds. Still, he's a likable hero. This version contains the "baby swap" sequence, as does the 1929 version; in each case, I don't get why this is even in the film, since it just seems too stupid and a waste of time. I guess it's supposed to be funny, but I didn't see the humor. The hanging sequence is over pretty quickly; we get to see the shadows of the hanged rustlers, and that's an effective scene. In the final shootout, Farnum shoots his gun like he is swatting at flies. I've seen this weird motion in other silents, and wonder who came up with this, because I can't figure out how someone could aim while doing this.