In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea

This is a charming little film and the use of the three-way split-screen is interesting. The cine-poem is also interesting as a genre but there are many more distinguished examples than this. I have however seen this film listed from time to time as "experimental" which it really is not in any very meaningful sense.

The split-screen was perfectly common as a device by this time and three-way splits had been used, notably for telephone calls in several films (of which Lois Weber's Suspense 1913 is an early example). It is certainly unusual to have an entire film in triptych but, as the film historian Kevin Brownlow points out in his discussion of this film, the device had already been used by the Italian company Ambrosio for tourist-travelogues (a not unimportant but hardly an especially "experimental" area of film-making).

It bears no real relation to the use of a three-screen cinerama effect for the final scenes of Napoléon by Abel Gance in 1927, which is far more ambitious (but not in the event entirely successful) undertaking in a film that could be described as "experimental" (I would refer the word "innovatory") in many other ways as well.

And, with regard to the content, this is a sweet little film but it is entirely conventional in its treatment of what was (even then) a rather old-fashioned poem.

In this experimental short film, Thomas Bailey Aldrich's poem appears below and above the shot--in the black border. Now here's the interesting part--it's in the form of a triptych--three screens side by side. I have no idea if it was to be shown on three screens or just on one split into the three sections. But as the poem is being projected on the screen, scenes are acted out in a beautiful artistic manner. Mermaids and fairies and the like appear on the screen using a double-exposure and it all is quite striking--and highly unusual for 1925--two years before Gance's famous epic triptych film "Naploeon". You should see this one--it's quite lovely.

In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea (1925)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The makers of this short are unknown to this day, which is a shame because the vision on screen is certainly something special and it's worth noting that this "widescreen" film was made a few years before Abel Gance's NAPOLEON. Thomas Bailey Aldrich's poem is brought to the screen with a special process, which is basically a widescreen format created by using three different frames, cutting off the top portion of the picture and placing the three frames side by side. This here gives the film a widescreen look and the makers also use this to tell the story. Often the man can be seen in the middle frame while his "visions" can be spotted in the outer two frames. The widescreen process here isn't a complete success but at the same time you have to tip your hat to the filmmakers for at least trying something different. There are times when the two outer frames don't match up completely with the middle one but I think it would be unfair for someone to criticize this here too much. It still looks wonderful at other times including one where our man is in the middle of the picture while a couple bathing women (or mermaids) are in the outer. The scene where our guy is walking down the street really doesn't match up too well but the effect is still quite striking.