The Girl and Her Trust

I've just recently come across this tile while watching the Landmarks of Early Film and I must say I'm completely taken by it.

OK, the visual effects are very dated, but then again, the effects themselves are not what makes the movie.

The thing that really impressed me was the character development of "The Girl". At first we see a girl working at the railstation and being the one who's in charge of keeping the money (one would more likely expect a man doing that in the wild west, not a woman). Next we see a man who fancies this girl and she's concerned for the money. He calms her down. I was sure that she'd be a helpless damsel in distress and he'd come in and rescue her. And here's the thing that surprised me most - it gets deeper then that.

The girl locks herself inside as the two tramps try to steal the money. She has the key to the strongbox. Handing the key over would surely save her, but she keeps to it. Also after locking herself into the room she doesn't faint or starts panicking. No! She actually tries to get help by telepraph. One of the tramps realizes it and cuts the line. Then she even finds a way to scare them off! Amazingly she puts a bullet into the keylock, places the scisors at the back and hammers away to fire the bullet off (something even MacGyver would be quite proud of).

And when the tramps take the strongbox she chases after them! She is a real heroine. But she is overpowered and the man from earlier on (with the help of rail employees) chatches the bad guys in a locomotive/handcart action chase sequence. And to make it a truly happy ending, they even have a little romantic scene when the girl is saved and the guy offers her lunch at the front bumper of the locomotive.

Brilliant.

OK, it's shorter, black and white and with no sound effects at all, but at points it reminded me so much of the panic room... You know... People on the outside trying to get to what a "helpless" woman has in a room they can't break into. And over 100 years old - I was breathless!

Girl and Her Trust, The (1912)

*** (out of 4)

D.W. Griffith short has a female telegraph operator being held up by a couple tramps who plan on stealing $2,000. Once again seeing a Griffith film from this period compared to what else was around just shows why they say the man invited film. Here Griffith uses the editing to build nice tension and some real excitement as the tramps kidnap the woman and head off with the good guy following. The train sequence is brilliantly done and this is 15 years before Buster Keaton's The General.

This short drama is quite a masterpiece for its time, using every available technique along with great skill in story-telling and photography, all of which take a fairly simple story and make it interesting, believable, and exciting. There is good detail that helps define and explain the characters, expert use of cross-cutting and editing to heighten the suspense, and a nice variety of indoor and outdoor settings. Dorothy Bernard also deserves credit as the young woman willing to risk danger in order to fulfill her trust.

Many of Griffith's short films show not only masterful technique, but also an impressive efficiency that wasn't always present in his later, longer features. "A Girl and Her Trust" is one of the best of all his shorter movies, and it deserves its place as one of the best-remembered and most praised movies of its era.

A highly attractive telegraphist at a country railway station spurns the suitor who brings her a soda, but allows the station porter several liberties. A message comes through that cash is being delivered. The porter loads his revolver from a box of cartridges, collects the money bag from the train, puts it in the station secure box, then goes off for lunch. Two tramps see the money and try to steal it by getting the box key from the girl. She barricades herself in her office and sends frantic messages down the wires for help. These are picked up at the next station, and an engine is given right of way to go to the rescue. Meanwhile the tramps try to break down the door. The girl puts a cartridge from the box into the keyhole, puts the points of some scissors to the cap and hits the scissors with a hammer. It is interesting that the cartridge case did not fly backwards and injure her. The bullet however fires into the room with the tramps and scares them. They lug the secure box out to a pump action trolley (like the one in The General), and head off. The girl rushes out intent on rescuing the money and is dragged onto the trolley. Meanwhile, the porter comes out of his house with his sandwiches in time to see the trolley vanishing. A few minutes later the rescue engine arrives; he jumps on and the chase begins. These railway scenes were especially well done, with a tracking shot of the racing engine taken from a parallel road, and shots both of the engine cab and the trolley taken from above. Eventually the tramps tire and the engine catches up with them and they are caught. In the final scene the porter and the telegraphist sit on the buffer beam of the engine as it backs up the line. They share his sandwiches, then a kiss which is shrouded in steam. That romantic ending has hardly ever been bettered.

As I was watching this I thought, 'Wait... have I seen this before? I could've swore I saw this exact same scenario in another silent short, even directed Griffith himself. This is uncan... oh, yeah, the Lonedale Operator!' Suddenly going back through my recent roladex or whatever of silent shorts I've been watching I discovered I recently watched the 1911 short, also from Biograph, called the Lonedale Operator, and as it turns out these two shorts have practically the same plot: girl is running an office for a train station, bandits come and are going to pull a robbery. The difference is that in 'Lonedale' a sick/dying father left the job for his daughter to do, and here she's just already on the job.

It might not matter to most though, since I'm sure if you're digging in to DW Griffith short films from over a century ago continuity isn't that important, so one might see this before Lonedale. I just find it lacks a certain core-story imagination, despite the fact that Griffith is certainly up to the task of creating suspense out of how the bandits come to the station and terrorize the girl. Now, it is different actresses in both (Blanche Sweet is lacking here, but Dorothy Bernard is alright), but again, I can't help but feel like if you've seen one semi-not-quite-almost helpless woman operator terrorized by thuggish bandits with a train robbery plot short film, you've seen em all.

All this said... I think I might like this one a little more if only because of the second half of the short when things ramp up and there's a sequence involving one of those things on the tracks that two people operate to move along (with the 'girl' along with, she shows some courage for her trust you know!), and this given parallel editing to the oncoming train.