A Terrible Discovery

A very strong picture, well conducted and intense. This reviewer has never sat before a picture that got more grip upon an audience. Around him there were ejaculations, sotto voce, profane, but the sincere st kind of applause. The tense moments come during a struggle between a gangster, determined to shoot the city's district attorney, and that worthy official It takes place at the district attorney's house. His little son is very well played part) had gone for help. There are no noticeable weaknesses in the picture. The impression made by the player who pictured the gangster was peculiar. His natural face is unusually kindly. He seems the kind of man that a lost child would address first; yet, as soon as he got at his dastardly work, that kindly expression vanished; he became the terrible gangster. The way he got into the house was by dressing up as a poor and sick old woman. He was taken in out of charity. His true character was the terrible discovery of the title. It is ended satisfactorily. - The Moving Picture World, January 6, 1912

Crook Charles Hill Mailes has vowed revenge on District Attorney Wilfred Lucas for putting his brother in prison. He disguises himself as an old woman, but can't get a shot at his target. So he pretends to collapse in front of Lucas' house, and is taken charitably inside. There he threatens Lucas and his son Billy -- played by Edna Foster. They manage to barricade in a room, but Mailes has a gun. Lucas can only delay him -- he has only one arm -- so he sends Billy out the window and in search of help.

It's a well-set-up Griffith short, with one of his patented sequence in which Lucas is trying to hold off Mailes, then cut to the would-be-rescuers, then back to Lucas and Mailes. If it seems a bit hackneyed to the modern audience, it's because Griffith perfected the technique so well that it became a hallmark of screen melodramas that mocked it.