The Lonely Villa

Watching this movie today, it's one that's more interesting than it is entertaining. In addition to being an early piece of cinema (and one that uses editing to some extent), this is also the earliest surviving movie with Mary Pickford, and maybe natural place to start if you want to explore her career. She plays the damsel in distress, and, well, you can't fault her performance as it leaves little doubt that that's what she is.

I'm sure this was a thrilling watch back in the day, and I hope there are some written accounts of how the audience reacted to it. It's obvious that the suspense is there, but only temporary accounts can tell if it worked as intended.

Lonely Villa (1909)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A gang lures a father away from his house so that they can rob it and terrorize his wife and three daughters. There's some great editing at the end that builds up the suspense but the direction isn't tight enough for it to work all the way through. Mary Pickford plays one of the children.

Son's Return, The (1909)

*** (out of 4)

A son goes off to the big city to make big bucks. Years later he returns and ends up staying at his parents inn but they've forgotten him but when they see his cash, they plan to rob him. This Griffith short certainly goes "out there" in its story but I always enjoy these downbeat films where the director could do whatever he wanted and didn't always have to add a happy ending onto the film. Mary Pickford has a small part as the man's love.

This is a decent short drama that creates some fairly good suspense with a story of a mother and her children being attacked by a gang of deceitful and brutal thieves. For its time, the story is told pretty well, shifting scenes at times to heighten the suspense. It does get a bit choppy in places, and things don't always fit together smoothly, whether due to the editing or perhaps simply due to its age. (It just doesn't seem to be as carefully pieced together as many of Griffith's short films.) But it's all watchable, and the story makes you want to find out what will happen. It should be interesting enough for anyone who likes these early short melodramas. A young Mary Pickford also has a small role.

Cross-cutting editing in movies builds suspense by going from one action to another. The film technique, still used in today's movies, illustrates events happening at the same time but in different locations. In D. W. Griffith's June 1909 "The Lonely Villa," the director advanced this particular editing craft from previous films. It was introduced as far back as the early 1900's, in particular Edwin Porter's "The Great Train Robbery (1903)."

After some prefunctory scenes in "The Lonely Villa" setting the stage of a father being called away for urgent business, Griffith then goes about following two storylines: the family home with just the mother and three daughters, the oldest being Mary Pickford, invaded by thieves while then cutting to the father going to the fake emergency site, only to discover the danger his family is in.

The rescue scenarios take on a quickened pulse as Griffith shortens each advancing clip by going back and forth between the two plots. The director's intention is to get his viewers' hearts beating faster and faster as the tension increases on the screen. Griffith would use this cross-cutting technique throughout the remainder of his film directing career, but with greater sophistication as his experience in movies gained more experience.

This is a good example of an idea that Hollywood uses nowadays. Panic Room was an attempt to make this into a full length film, but it dragged too much to be very exciting. But this short silent film shows the same plot, but without all the unimportant excess. What is left is the original, good idea, and that makes up the whole film. Suspense is retained throughout. Quality film making and innovation that is all too rare now, almost 100 years later.