Scott Lord Silent Film: The Mark of Zorro (Niblo, 1920)

Toward the end of 1920, Wid's Daily titled its review of Douglas Fairbanks in "The Mark of Zorro" (eight reels) directed by Fred Niblo, with "Slow Starting But 'Doug' Gets This One Over Well". In regard to the film as a whole, it wrote, "Exceedingly entertaining romance with Doug doing a dual role and his usual acrobatics." Appearing in the film with Douglas Fairbanks is actress Margueritte Del La Motte.

Author Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, described "The Mark of Zorro" as "a finely photographed swashbuckling romance".

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Scott Lord Silent Film: Blood and Sand (Niblo, 1922)

With a photoplay by June Mathis, "Blood and Sand", directed in 1922 by Fred Niblo, showcased Rudolph Valentino with Lila Lee, Nita Naldi and Rose Rosanova. Author Peter Cowie, in his volume EIghty Years of Cinema, described "Blood and Sand" as "Stagebound and tearjerking".

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Scott Lord Silent Film: Mary Pickford in The Poor Little Rich Girl (Tour...

In his volume Eighty Years of CInema, author Peter Cowie describes the film "Poor Little Rich Girl" as "the fey beauty of Mary Pickford at its most beguiling." Directed by Maurice Tourneur from a photoplay written by Frances Marion, the film stars Mary Pickford with actresses Gladys Fairbanks, Madlaine Traverse and Maxine Eliot Hicks.

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Scott Lord Silent Film: The New York Hat (D.W. Griffith, Biograph)

Directed by D. W. Griffith, the film features the first photoplay written by Anita Loos. Subsequently, Loos was to write the scenarios and screenplays to films which starred Douglas Fairbanks. The New Movie Magazine during 1930 nostalgically related that the film had also introduced Lionel Barrymore to the screen and that Loos, who had only been sixteen years old at the time of its release, had received “the large sum of $15” for writing the film. Author Iris Barry explains that it was not only Anita Loos that was behind the scenes, “At this period, ideas for films were commonly bought from outsiders and members of the company alike. Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett and others contributed many of the plots Griffith used.” This in part can be taken into consideration when apply Autuer theory to the abrupt difference between the scriptwriting methods of D.W Griffith and Thomas Ince and when reconsidering autuer theory when comparing the directorial efforts of D.W. Griffith and Ingmar Bergman in the mileau of a theatrical acting company.
In the volume D.W. Griffith, American Filmaker, Iris Barry writes that 1912 was a year that D.W. Griffith was an innovator not only in the depiction of social themes and social problems but also in film technique and the uses of the camera as well as the legnthening of the onscreen running time of the two reeler. Barry describes the filmmaking involved in “The New York Hat” (one reel),The film uses cut-backs, close-shots and sharply edited scenes with ease and mastery: close-ups made acting a matter of expresssion and minute guestures instead of the stereotyped guestures of the popular theater.” Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, writes, "Close ups already predominate this film."
In the short scenes of Griffith’s film, Mary Pickford is shown to the right of the screen in medium close shot, trying on a hat, her hands and elbows shown in the frame. Griffith cuts on the action of her leaving the frame to exterior shots. In a later scene, Griffith positions her to the left of the screen, and, his already having shown time having elapsed between the two scenes, then brings the action back to the right of the screen frame. As an early reversal of screen direction, or screen positioning, there is the use of screen editing in between the complimentary positions of showing her in the same interior. During the film the actress is, almost referentially, often kept in profile, facing to the right of the screen's frame. Although Griffith may have been still developing editing techniques, it has been noted that the acting style in the film can be seen as an example of a more naturalistic and less histrionic acting style than that of other contemporary films.

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Scott Lord Silent Film: Linda Arvidson in The Adventures of Dollie (D.W....

Actress Linda Ardvison, writing in the periodcial Film Fun during 1916, includes the "now historic" film "The Advntures of Dollie" (one reel) directed by D.W Griffith for the Biograph Film Company in 1908. Arvidson wrote under the name Mrs. D.W. Griffith. In one installment she reminisces about travelling to film exterior scenes, claiming they hadn't automobiles yet and visited locations by train or by boat. In a later installment she dicusses her salary for the film, "How much money I made! Twenty eight dollars in two weeks, enough for a whole spring outfit." What is more enjoyable is the autobiography of Mrs. D.W. Griffith, When Movies Were Young, published in 1925. Much of the material from the Film Fun periodical is repeated, worded similarly, as she gives an account of D.W. Griffith the actor being offered a provisional chance to direct his first film, "The Adventures of Dollie", given that he could return to acting if necessary. Mrs. D.W. Griffith exlains Griffith having been accepted as a director for Biograph, "For one year now, those movies so covered with slime and so degraded would have to come first to come first in his thoughts and affections....agonizing days when he would have given his life to be able to chuck the job." She includes not only the studio on East Fourteenth Street but the theaters on Third and Ninth Avenues as places into which one would not be seen going.
Author Roger Manvell, in his sixty page introduction to the anthology "Experiment in the Film" credits "The Adventures of Dollie" as the first film in which D.W. Griffith had used the flashback.

Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, notes that it was in 1908, in the film "For Love of Gold", that D.W. Griffith had first used the close up shot in film.

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Scott Lord Silent Film: The Great Train Robbery (Porter,1903)

In the autobiographical reminiscences William N. Selig printed in Photoplay Magazine during 1920, Selig, perhaps almost graciously, credits Edison with the "first single reel picture containing a story in continuity", although he adds that "The Great Train Robbery" was only 800 feet and that he was soon on Edison's coattails with films of his own of length equal to it. Interestingly, Selig recounts in the article director Frank Boggs as "the real pioneer in photographic reproduction", his during 1908 releasing a one reel film every week; Selig claims Boggs was assasinated on the Selig Studios during 1912. Vladimir Petric in A Visual/Analytical History of Silent Film (1895-1930), Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, notes Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" as a "primitive use of parralel editing to dramatize the narrative". Not only is this in sharp contrast to the earlier cinema of attractions that relegated storytelling to the act of display, but the film is significant as the first film made in the Western genre. It is uncanny that the closing shot, as a subjective shot, is an attraction, something static and something dispalyed, urging the spectatator to draw and shoot back. Patric Vonderau and Vinzenz Hedigar have written, "The visuality of the display, however, is still indispensible to its effect."- albeit their recent volume, Films That Work, is primarily concerned with international industrial films.

Author Nicholas A. Vardac opines that it was the films of Edwin S. Porter that D.W. Griffith aquired the technique of viewing the shot within its context as a "syntax for the melodrama". Whether crosscutting began with Edwin S. Porter and "The Great Train Robbery", a film which is attributed as having used croscutting in the volume The Film Idea, written by Stanley J. Solomon, or whether it was more properly developed by D.W. Griffith around 1908, as with the parallel editing in the 1907 films "The Greaser's Gauntlet" and "The Fatal Hour" (Phillipe Gauthier, Harvard University), author Stanley Solomon points out that crosscutting was intrinsiclly cinematic, rather than dramaturgical or theatrical by describing it as "a technique suitable to the form of cinema but unnatural to the form of nineteenth century stage drama, which was at that time a significant influence on the new media." A recent online film class on how to "read" a film from described the film as being comprised of "seperate shots of non-continuous, non-overlapping action" while being careful to designate the film as an early example of crosscutting. Of "The Great Train Robbery", author Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, writes, "The movement, as well as the narrative, was carried over from one scene to another." Cowie mentions the film "Runaway Match", directed in 1903 by Alf Collins as being an early narrative silent in which "camera movements and positions are exploited to advantage". The film is fast paced, depicting a couple hurriedly en route to their betrothal, but includes a close up insert shot of their wedding rings.

Film historian Charles Mussur, in Before the Nickelodeon :Edwin S. Porter, writes, "Porter's film meticulously documents a process...The film's narrative structure, as Gaudreault notes, utilizes temporal repetition with an overall narrative progression." As narrative it was essentially a reenactment film. He adds that "Porter exploited procedures that heighten the realism and believabilty of the image" (David Levy).

It is apparent that "The Great Train Robbery" was filmed not only in the studio, but on actual locations, including in fact a train Porter had borrowed in New Jersey; it also apparent that "The Great Train Robbery" released during 1904 by Sigmund Lubin also combined scenes filmed both outdoors and inside the studio, the film also concluding with a close up of an outlaw. Catalougues "free upon request" featuring "Lubin's Latest Hits" list Lubin's "The Great Train Robbery" as running 600 ft, there being sixteen seperate scenes to the film. The 1903 Edison Manufacturing Company catalougue lists the running legnth of Edison's "The Great Train Robbery", a "sensational and highly tragic subject", as 740 ft, the film divided into fourteen scenes.

The sequel to "The Great Train Robbery", titled "The Little Train Robbery" (1905) although directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Company, is a parody, and features an all child actor cast.

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