Falling Leaves

This worthwhile and often moving melodrama deals with what at the time was a very topical concern, dramatizing the effects of tuberculosis and the hope of a cure for it. The story is slightly over-optimistic, in that it implies more than was true at the time about what could be done for afflicted patients, but as a story it is well-crafted, and it is quite effective, in addition to obviously being well-meaning.

The main characters are two sisters, one of whom has tuberculosis, their parents, and the doctors who attend the sick girl. The nicely-chosen title "Falling Leaves" comes from a touching misunderstanding of the younger sister when she hears a doctor's gloomy prognosis for her beloved sister. Her innocent misconception drives the plot and makes her a very sympathetic character.

Given the somber nature of the material, the characters are quite believable, and are played with sensitivity yet without any excess emoting. The two daughters and their mother are particularly endearing characters. The story, likewise, is told with good pacing. This is one of director Alice Guy Blaché's best surviving movies, and her naturalistic approach works quite well in this story. It's easily one of the better features of its genre and era.

Dr. Earl Headley has found a wonderful serum for the cure of consumption, a terrible disease that struck people at the beginning of the last century ( fortunately we, the aristocrats, don't have those diseases; we only suffer gout or delirium tremens ). Youngster Winifred, has many serious problems; not only does she have to wear a ribbon bigger than her head, she also has consumption. The family doctor, tells her mother and father that the poor little girl will pass away "when the last leaf falls". Little Trixie, Winifred's young sister, hears the terrible news and in order to save her sister, she ties together the leaves in the family garden trying to keep her sister from dying. It is in this fateful garden, where little Trixie meets accidentally Dr. Earl Headley and this encounter leads to the doctor giving his wonderful serum to Winifred and saving her life. Three months later, Winifred is completely cured and this German Count hopes that the first medical practitioner, the family doctor, was fired for his incompetence.

"Falling Leaves" was directed by Dame Alice Guy, also known as Alice Guy-Blaché, a pioneer film director in many aspects. She was French ( not a remarkable fact, at all ) and the world's first woman director, and was very prolific and even experimented with sound in several of her early films. She worked in France and USA, where she formed the production company that made this film. "Falling Leaves" is a good example of those early films for which Dame Alice Guy was known. It's a one-reel production that depicts a simple story with a static camera but in an effective way ( the garden sequence has a special oneiric atmosphere ). The actors play their roles with extravagant gestures but the only thing that really matters in this one-reel production was the message not the messengers.

This film begins with Dr. Headley showing off his success at treating tuberculosis (in this film called by the old term 'consumption')--a serious epidemic in the early 20th century throughout the world. Then rather abruptly, it switches to a dramatization of a tuberculosis victim. However, instead of realistically portraying its effects, the actress goes from seemingly normal to grandiose spasms in a matter of seconds. The mother shows great concern, while the youngest child (Trixie) just seems kind of lost--wandering about the frame. When the doctor comes out after examining the young lady, he waxes poetical and talks about falling leaves--more like he's delivering a speech than a real doctor.

Fortunately for the sick girl, Trixie snaps out of her useless wandering about and decides to take action (even though she looks to be only about 6 years-old). She sneaks out of the house at night and locates Dr. Headley who then agrees to treat her older sister. Then, with the aid of Headley's serum, the girl is cured and lives happily ever after.

Overall, while the film has obvious dramatic flaws, it is very good for a 1912 film. Had it been made just a few years later, it would have been seen as very old fashioned. BUT, in 1912 ALL films were old fashioned and dated. So, relatively speaking, it's a very good film. Seen today, it is more an interesting curio.

Falling Leaves (1912)

*** (out of 4)

Melodramatic but good film from Alice Guy-Blache about a young girl who overhears the family doctor saying that her older sister won't live by the time the last leaf falls off the tree. The sister is dying of tuberculosis so the young girl goes outside and starts to tie leaves back to the tree and by doing this she gets the attention of a doctor who knows a cure. FALLING LEAVES is exactly the type of film that D.W. Griffith had been making for about three years but Guy-Blache manages to bring her touch to the subject and while it's way too dramatic at times, the heart of the story is certainly brought to the screen with care. Again, if you're not used to movies from this era then it's best you don't start here but I thought for the most part the film's story was told with a certain loving care that makes it worth viewing. Guy-Blache manages to make the film move at a very good pace and there's no question that she knows how to build up some tender moments and especially the scene with the young girl trying to put leaves back on the trees. The cinematography is actually pretty good throughout with some nice shots and the new music score also benefits to the film quite well.

Alice Guy's US career produced relatively few really good films but Guy was a great searcher after ideas and would from time to time, as she had done in her French career, come up with a good one. It is excellent news for instance that her "race film" of 1912, A Fool and his Money has now been rediscoveerd and restored and let us hope that one day her In the Year 2000, a more sophisticated remake of her earlier Résultats du féminisme, will also be rediscovered. She has also a very good instinct for topical subjects. Her Making of an American Ciitizen, again 1912, if rather crudely presented, was a sharp-witted repsponse to the controversy over immigration tht preocupied the US in these years. Here similarly she has taken the subject of the "white plague", tuberculosis, a disease known thoughout history but considered in the nineteenth century to be the mal de siècle, and produced a typically modern account (cinema custiomarily allied itself with modernity in this way) that rejected the romantic fatalism of nineteenth-centiry accounts. It is clever idea to privilege her Frenchness - picked up by the Moving Picture World review - by a reference to the best known example, Murger's Scènes de la vie de Bohème, and, as it were, reverse the magnets. So it would be quite inappropriate for the girl to die in this film. While "the beautiful death" of Mimi is accepted as a fatality (an aspect even more strongly emphasised by the theatrical and operatic versions), here the doctor's fatalism is shown as being out of tune with the times when advances in medical understanding of tuberculosis and the establishment of specialised sanatoria were rendering it perfectly preventable and treatable (emphasised in a series of films of the subject made by Edison at this time for the in assoication with the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis). The "miracle cure" of Dr. Earle is a bit false and glib (again a rather typical crudity in Guy's deveopment of her ideas) and attracted criticism but unlike the Edison films (which were more or less public service films), this is intended more as a fable of outr time. No more Mimis. It also sows hw well Guy understood the optimistic US conviction about the value of progress and the "optional" nature of death.