Adventures of Dollie

After 6 months in front of the camera, D. W. Griffith, 33, was given a shot to direct a movie for Biograph Studios in July 1908. The studio's previous go-to director, veteran Wallace McCutcheon, Sr., became ill and his son didn't work out. G.W. Bitzer, Biograph's primary cameraman, recommended Griffith because the actor was always asking questions about the details of moviemaking. Given the assignment at directing, his first film was "The Adventures of Dollie."

The movie was a success, to which Biograph assigned him as its main director. The film itself is quite pedestrian, but it does show Griffith's understanding of that day's cinematic language. A few clipped scenes reflects his desire not to stretch out segments so in vogue in the early 1900's. (Yet the lingering sequence of the barrel traveling downstream shows he hadn't quite grasped future film pacing) Griffith's use of depth-of-field, however reflects a knowledge of departing from stage-bound right-to-left movements and captures the actors moving towards and away from the camera.

As the first movie directed by D.W. Griffith, this is certainly of historical interest, both in itself and in comparison with his later, far better efforts. Although "The Adventures of Dollie" is just fair in itself, you can see the director's potential and, even more obviously, the kind of material that he liked to work with.

The setup is one that Griffith would use many times with various modifications, contrasting a conventional American family with a person or persons of whom Griffith disapproved, and bringing them into conflict. In this case, it is a pair of gypsy vagabonds who are responsible for pulling a young girl out of her seemingly idyllic family situation and placing her in a series of perils. Much of the time, the story looks forced or contrived. Yet only a few years later, Griffith would tell very similar stories in such a way that you could hardly help being moved to whatever emotions he wanted you to feel.

Although Griffith is often given too much credit for inventing new techniques, he certainly deserves credit for taking many of the rudimentary techniques of the era and systematically figuring out how to use them to maximum effect. A few years later, he would have added a couple of very brief moments at the beginning to maximize audience sympathy for Dollie, he would have provided a more believable motivation for the vagabonds' actions, and he would have found a way to make the audience feel a stronger sense of danger during Dollie's trip down the river.

Even here, though, his story-telling skills are evident. The print in one of Kino's excellent historical collections is missing all of the inter-titles, and yet there is never a moment when the action is not perfectly clear.

Dollie's 'adventures' are actually rather frightening, when you think about them for a while. But Griffith soon learned how to save his audiences this effort, by devising a wealth of resourceful ways to make sure that viewers did not miss the points he wanted to make.

It's not anything new to say the early works of D. W. Griffith weren't anything spectacular. In fact, films like "The Adventures of Dollie" are what the majority of his output consists of: short, 10-15 minute film dramas often featuring a simple story that is told through the standard monotonous long shots that each film consisted of back in the day. This early on, there's absolutely no hint whatsoever of the suspenseful sort of storytelling later films, such as the brilliant "Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance" would feature. However, considering the rest of the movies during this time looked the exact same in technique as this one, there's really no reason to complain.

"The Adventures of Dollie" is about a little girl who is kidnapped by gypsies and ends up going on a crazy ride in a barrel. There's really little else to it than that, although there is some nice cinematography involved and the story works for what it is. That being said, the film is really only worth seeing for historical reasons as it doesn't contain the excitement and buildup of his later material, and it would take until 1912 or so before Griffith would begin shooting more advanced, better crafted shorts.

Though listed as "lost" in Iris Barry's 1940 biography of D.W. Griffith, "The Adventures of Dollie" was discovered in the Library of Congress' paper print division in the 50s and transferred back to flexible film. Having seen it on 8mm, I can attest that it is a rather ordinary one-reeler consisting of thirteen scenes shot from twelve set-ups with nothing to distinguish it from other Biograph product of the era than that it is known to have been the first film directed by D.W. Griffith. I'm rather surprised by the high rating the imdb voters have given it, as Griffith would achieve much higher standards even within 1908, and would go on in short measure to blow films like "Dollie" totally out of the water, both technically and in terms of story development. For him it was merely a start, for us it's amazing this historic treasure survives to be seen at all.

This is where it began: The first picture of arguably the most important director – if not the most important single figure – in cinema history. Is it any good? Well, no, of course not. No genius ever arrived on a scene fully formed. Considered in itself and of its time it is much like anything else an inexperienced director might have produced for the Biograph company in 1908. But with hindsight… DW Griffith's background was in theatre, which set him apart because many of the earliest film pioneers were essentially technicians. This is in part the reason why a lot of visual effects were perfected before narrative and acting style. Silent cinema as it was then however differed little from stagecraft, especially since mime was then a lot more common, and with this crudely melodramatic tale Griffith is essentially directing broad pantomime, full of exaggerated gesture to overcompensate for the lack of speech.

However, Griffith appears to acknowledge one difference between cinema and theatre, one that was to become key to his style ever after, and that is the use of depth. Virtually all the movement in The Adventures of Dollie is towards or away from the camera, as oppose to across it. The long static takes particularly highlight this approach. This is before editing within a scene or using inserts were common methods, and this means we get some odd-looking (and very theatrical) set-ups, as in the scene where Dollie is kidnapped, the father walks away and the gypsy approaches all within the same shot, meaning our sense of logic tells us that the father can't be more than a dozen paces away when his girl is snatched. Griffith is still using the concept of stage wings for entrances and exits, imagining that once someone has walked out of sight they are out of the scene, which looks unnatural for cinema. However, rather than having them at left and right as on a stage, the father exits walking straight into the foreground, while the gypsy emerges from the bushes in the background. It still looks illogical, but it shows a willingness to work on solutions towards a non-theatrical style.

In doing this, Griffith is showing nothing entirely new and certainly nothing exceptional, but he is showing a certain tendency, a particular way of thinking about the medium that would later lead to amazing things. And Griffith also displays his quality as an ideas man that transcends all technique and experience. For example, when the father searches through the gypsy caravan, the gypsy is resting his foot on the barrel in which Dollie is hidden, cockily flaunting the secret before his enemy. It's little touches like this, giving a scene that little bit of character, that separate the great directors from the merely good ones.