Scott Lord Silent Film: The Covered Wagon (James Cruze, 1924)

SILENT FILM The book Pictorial Beauty on the Screen, written by Victor Oscar Freeburg in 1923, was dedicated to James Cruze, director of the silent film 'The Covered Wagon' (ten reels). The introduction to the volume was written by silent film director Rex Ingram. Ingram notes that the silent film "must be composed of certain pictorial qualifications such as form, composition and a proper distribution of light and shade." Film poetry began with the silent film, despite any rennaisance in the nineteen seventies.

John L. Fell, in his volume A History of Film chronicles, "'THe Covered Wagon', directed by James Cruze in 1923, proved even more successful than 'The Iron Horse'. It was epic in conception, weak in plot, and impressively photographed." The cinematographer to the film had been Karl Brown.

Allan Eyles notes that "The Covered Wagon" (Cruze, 1923), made in the United States at a time when film criticism was giving more than a cursoy glance to the work of Swedish silent film director Victor Seastrom who had only just then arrived in America with Mauritz Stiller to bring a close to the Golden Age of Swedish Silent, was remarkable for its depicting the relationships of the characters within narrative to the enviornment in which the story takes place, its plotline built around the interaction of its three primary characters.

After mentioning "The Covered Wagon" as having been a western differing in genre from the comedies directed by James Cruze, author Gary Carey, Museum of Modern Art, in his volume Lost Films, as early as 1970, writes of the comedy "Beggar on Horseback", directed by Cruze during 1925 having been once considered lost before copies of it had resurfaced. Gary Carey includes the comedy 'Merton of the Movies" (eight reels), which featured the cameos of fifty silent film actors and actresses, directed by Cruze during 1923 as having been a Lost Silent Film during 1970 while overlooking a second satire on tinseltown titled "Hollywood" (eight reels), also presently considered lost, starring Viola Dana and directed by James Cruze during 1923. The film "Ruggles of Red Gap" (eight reels), directed by James Cruze in 1923 and starring actress Lois Wilson, is also presently considered a lost silent film.

James Cruze had again used cinematographer Karl Brown to film while directing the films "Hollywood", "Merton of the Movies" and "Ruggles of Red Gap".

Silent Film Silent Film

Scottt Lord Silent Film: Carol Dempster in Dream Street (D. W. Griffith, 1921)

"There is nothing of interest I can tell you about myself." A year later, Photoplay Magazine caught up with Carol Dempster and she purportedly used the exact same words, "There is nothing of interest I can tell you about myself.". Photoplay Magazine deigned her to be The Mystery Girl of the Movies. Photoplay journalist Dorothy Herzog quotes D.W. Griffith as having said that Dempster was cast in he film "Dream Street" (ten reels) for her dancing ability, "Anyone with the poise and grace to necome such a potentiality as a dancer undoubtedly had the ability to rise to similiar heights in an allied art if properly developed."

"Dream Street" was photographed by cameraman Henrik Sartov for D.W. Griffith, Inc and United Artists in 1921.

D. W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith

In his volume The Films of D.W. Griffith, author Edward Wagenkneckt discounts the lofty intentions of D.W. Griffith in an attempt to lower the director from his crepuscular inaccessible Pantheon, "His "higher" thoughts were often inseperable from the popular ladies' journals of the time. When he made homey philosophical observations, greta charm and loveliness often resulted; but but when he decided to tackle big subjects like like the principles of Good and Evil, he seemed sophmoric. Of course, Griffith's ideas were more sophisticated than the script for Dream Street suggests (his play The Treadmill shows that), but when he tried to reduce his already cliche themes to the audience's level, he somehow lost the poetry and naivete and kept only the didacticism."

Edward Wagerknect adresses Griffith's filmmaking technique in "Dream Street" by noting that Billy Bitzer would often light a set flatly whereas there were "pools of light and deep shadows" in "Dream Street", to which Wagerknect attributes it having been shot entirely in the studio.

John L. Fell, in his volume A History of Film, explains, " 'Dream Street' interestingly poses the notion that our dreams somehow relate functionally to life: Griffith designs his parallel editing at places so that life is alternately 'real' and 'revery'."

D.W. Griffith D.W. Griffith-Carol Dempster D.W. Griffith-Carol Dempster

Scott Lord Silent Film: Carol Dempster in The Girl Who Stayed Home (D.W. Griffith, 1919)

Directed by D.W.Griffith and photographed by G.W. Bitzer for the Famous Players Lasky Corporation "The Girl Who Stayed at Home" (seven reels) showcased actress Carol Dempster. In their volume The films of D.W. Griffith, Edward Wagenkneckt and Anthony Slide describe the theater transpiring on screen, the theatrical element, by contrasting the loves scenes of each of the two couples; compared to the Seymour-Harron affair, the "Carol Dempster-Richard Barthelmess love affair is strangely tepid; it lacks the joyful emotion of true feeling."

D.W. Griffith and S.E.V. Taylor had adapted the photoplay from an original story Taylor had written.
D. W. Griffith D.W. Griffith-Carol Dempster

D.W. Griffith-Carol Demoster