A Corner in Wheat

D. W. Griffith was still finding his feet as a film director when he made this early short for Biograph in 1909, but it's clear that he was already emerging as a leader among the pioneering directors in New York.

This is quite a macabre parable in which an unscrupulous tycoon suffers an ironic fate after cornering the world market in wheat and boosting his bank balance by $4,000,000 in the process. Many aspects of the film are still quite primitive by today's standards - particularly the fraught scene in the trading pit during which nearly everybody overacts outrageously so that the viewer doesn't know where to look.

The cross-cutting for which Griffith would become justly famous is in evidence here, but it's interesting that, instead of using it to heighten moments of tension or suspense, he uses successive shots to emphasise the contrasting lifestyles of the ruthless speculator who drunkenly toasts his good fortune at a banquet with his friends while the poor working masses suffer the economic fallout of his manipulation of the market.

A Corner in Wheat is a little meditation on capitalism, derived from Frank Norris, weaving together narrative fragments linked by their relation to wheat. The film begins with farmers sowing grain and taking their meager harvest to market. Capitalist speculators engineer the "corner in wheat" of the title, establishing full control over the world's supply. We see, intercut with this coup and the main capitalist's ensuing celebrations, the effects on others: another speculator is ruined, the farmers return home empty-handed, the urban poor go hungry and begin to riot when bread becomes unaffordable. The riot is squelched, but the "Wheat King" meets with his just desserts, inadvertently buried under an avalanche of grain, while the farmers continue to toil.

7* (10* Rating System)

A greedy tycoon decides, on a whim, to corner the world market in wheat. This doubles the price of bread, forcing the grain's producers into charity lines and further into poverty.

D. W. Griffith was, of course, a master of the early cinema and dominated the silent film. He may be best known for "Intolerance" and "Birth of a Nation", but this is a notable film in its own right, showing the struggle between agriculture and investors. What political message was being said (if any)? Strangely, the film is said to be based on the novel "The Pit". How exactly an entire novel can be adapted to a 10-minute film is not known. If anything, it would simply share the same theme. Maybe I ought to track down "The Pit"...

Early film of "social relevance" directed by D.W. Griffith. It's a little difficult to follow - apparently, Mr. Griffith is showing the contrast between the wealthy "Wheat King" (played by Frank Powell) and the poor "Farmer" (played by James Kirkwood). The farmer does the manual work, laboring in the fields. The wealth businessman reaps the profits, in luxury. In the film, Mr. Powell's character becomes more and more greedy, making the price of goods so high the poor farmers can't afford the goods they helped create. Of the supporting players, Henry B. Walthall is most impressive as Kirkwood's associate. Griffith mixes location and set nicely. Watch the wicked "Wheat King" meet a pitiful, ironic end.

****** A Corner in Wheat (12/13/09) D.W. Griffith ~ Frank Powell, James Kirkwood, Henry B. Walthall

(Note: This is the first of three short films by D.W. Griffith that I care to highlight by commenting on them. The others are "The Girl and Her Trust" and "The Battle at Elderbush Gulch".)

D.W. Griffith usually made only three types of films: melodramas, social commentary and suspense (usually either battle scenes or the last-minute rescue, or both). His features often contain all three genres. His films were often set during the Victorian age or the Civil War era, or some other turning point in American history. His films of modern setting drip of Victorian sentiments. Mostly, his films were theatrical (the stories, interior shots and acting, most consistently). Griffith's films are categorical because he, apparently, rarely used scripts and was the rare filmmaker that interacted with the scenarists, and thus invented the role of director.

"A Corner in Wheat" is simple: it is social commentary. Based on a Frank Norris story, the anti-monopoly narrative fits with a recurrent theme of Griffith's films--sympathy for the poor. (It's rather hypocritical, however, considering that Griffith worked for a member of the Motion Picture Patents Company.) The story, albeit better than its contemporaries, is not of much interest, or, rather, is not why I highlighted this short film.

In 1903, Edwin S. Porter crosscut scenes out of temporal order in "The Great Train Robbery". Parallel-action crosscutting as dissection of a scene with spatially separate actions appeared as early as 1907 in Pathé and Vitagraph films. The crosscutting in "A Corner in Wheat" is exceptional because it functions as contrast between the wheat magnate's dinner party and the wheat farmers not being able to afford bread at a market. I'm not sure who helped Griffith with the editing, but it was probably James Smith, as usual. The parallel editing is appropriately slow paced, so again in the comeuppance dénouement. As well, the final shot was a good attempt at poignancy. The rest of the photoplay, especially the camera positioning, is primitive.