The House with Closed Shutters

Henry B. Walthall (as Charles Randolph) goes off to fight for the Confederacy, during the Civil War. Also joining the ranks are his sister (Agnes Randolph)'s suitors - Joseph Graybill and Charles West. Later, in General Robert E. Lee's tent, soldier Walthall is chosen for an dangerous mission. But, the war, and drink, have turned him into a coward; unable to complete the mission, he runs home to mother (Grace Henderson). To save family honor, Ms. West puts on her brother's uniform to complete the mission. After receiving sad news from General Lee, mother Henderson demands cowardly Walthall hide in "The House with Closed Shutters", so folks will think he died honorably. Her plans are complicated when the sister's suitors return again, and again… and again. The two suitors certainly do persevere! Directed by D.W. Griffith.

*** The House with Closed Shutters (8/8/10) D.W. Griffith ~ Henry B. Walthall, Dorothy West, Joseph Graybill

Until recently with film releases such as Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens" and Gal Gadot in "Wonder Woman," females in action movies were for most part acting like damsels in distress, where macho males would come to their rescue. In cinema's early days, however, women took on more heroic, courageous roles (And that was before they got the right to vote in 1920.). A prime example of the female heroine during that era is Biograph Studio's "The House With Closed Shutters," directed by D. W. Griffith and released in August 1910.

The movie, set during the Civil War, has a brother, who has a love affair with the bottle, sign up for the Confederacy. He volunteers to ride a message through the Union lines to a rebel force. After an initial confrontation with the enemy, he retreats to his home, where the mother and sister witness him shirking from his assignment. The sister takes the message and does what the brother should have done--and more.

Numerous short one-reeler movies released during the 1910-1918 time frame showing females in action films clearly having more of a courageous prominent roles than after World War One. The main reason was the large number of women involved in all phases of filmmaking before the war. After the Armistice, women's role as the heroine in action films diminished as feature films took over and men began to dominate the cinematic industry. This caused female heroic roles in action movies drying up where they ultimately ended up playing second fiddle to their male counterparts. Now cinema is seeing a resurgence of female heroes in action roles, a mantle women are inheriting after decades of neglect.

House with Closed Shutters, The (1910)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Henry B. Walthall plays a Confederate solder who is sent on a mission by General Lee but he soon turns coward and returns home. Fearing the family name being disgraced, his sister (Dorothy West) takes his place and delivers the message but she is then killed. The mother then closes up the house so that their secret will not get out. This is a rather strange Civil War short from Griffith because the story is pretty wild but there's still a lot of power here. I'd be lying if I said I knew what Griffith was trying to get across here, although there's no doubt that the word coward is looked at very strongly. I'm not sure if he wanted women of the war to get more respect than they did but there's also another side to a family's shame and what they'll do to keep their name clean. The film benefits from some very strong performances with Walthall leading the way. His scenes of turning coward are very powerful as are the moments with West taking over and fighting. Grace Henderson is good as the mother and Charles West appears as well. The cinematography is once again top-notch as is the one battle sequence.

This is another of DW Griffith's numerous civil war pictures, made not long after the well-crafted In the Border States. A kind of repetitive formula is starting to develop for these particular shorts, which all begin with a man bidding his family goodbye, then going to join the lines of marching men amid cheering, waving and weeping. As with In the Border States the storytelling is direct and economic, and title cards are not needed. In this case, the scene is set in the opening shot with Dorothy West sewing together a Confederate flag, while Henry B. Walthall proudly stands by her. In an instant we get the era, the setting and the family relationship.

One difference between The House with Closed Shutters and the majority of Griffith's civil war shorts, is that it actually shows large scale – albeit brief – battle sequences. The shots of the trenches and Dorothy West being gunned down with the flag in her hands are similar to the imagery from the battle in Birth of a Nation.

Despite the tightly staged opening sequence, The House with Closed Shutters is overall fairly average. With its story tending more towards melodrama than action there is unfortunately plenty of scope for pantomimey acting (the chief offender here being Grace Henderson). But it does serve as another example of Griffith's attitude to the war – that neither side in the conflict was right or wrong, but that heroism, duty and honour are important above all else, regardless of their cause.

Six stars. Because the first five minutes of this 17-minute film are so tedious. We are subject to Dorothy West prancing around her house, waving the battle flag she has just sewn, in an absurd paroxysm of patriotic frenzy.

Then we get several minutes of various young men strutting like peacocks in their spanking new uniforms. A third of the run-time has passed, and NOTHING has happened yet!

Yeah, yeah, "scene-setting", "establishment of character", "presaging". But I watched this just after rewatching "In the Border States" (in a set of Griffith's Civil War films on the second disk of the Kino release of Birth of a Nation). And this film suffers drastically from the comparison.

Now, once the lads rush off to war, things improve. And the rest of the film gives us a really bizarre tale of honor, cowardice, and retribution. Henry Walthall (a Griffith regular) gets to toss aside the heroic convention that his status would demand, and Dorothy West gets to shine as his sister, left to deal with her brother's failure. The consequences of that failure end up turning into something out of a Poe story. I'll also give a nod to Grace Henderson, as the mother. She's the best actor in the film. I can believe everything that she shows from start to finish.

This isn't one of Griffith's better shorts. The start it too absurd and too long. But the resolution is splendidly perverse. 5 February 2025.