The Art of the Moving Picture

by Vachel Lindsay

The village in general has never suspected the nephew. Only two people suspect him: the broken-hearted girl and an old friend of his father. This gentleman puts a detective on the trail. (The detective is impersonated by Ralph Lewis.) The gradual breakdown of the victim is traced by dramatic degrees. This is the second case of the thing I have argued as being generally impossible in a photoplay chronicle of a private person, and which the considerations of chapter twelve indicate as exceptional. We trace the innermost psychology of one special citizen step by step to the crisis, and that path is actually the primary interest of the story. The climax is the confession to the detective. With this self-exposure the direct Poe-quality of the technique comes to an end. Moreover, Poe would end the story here. But the Poe-dream is set like a dark jewel in a gold ring, of which more anon.

Let us dwell upon the confession. The first stage of this conscience-climax is reached by the dramatization of The Tell-tale Heart reminiscence in the memory of the dreaming man. The episode makes a singular application of the theories with which this chapter begins. For furniture-in-motion we have the detective's pencil. For trappings and inventions in motion we have his tapping shoe and the busy clock pendulum. Because this scene is so powerful the photoplay is described in this chapter rather than any other, though the application is more spiritual than literal. The half-mad boy begins to divulge that he thinks that the habitual ticking of the clock is satanically timed to the beating of the dead man's heart. Here more unearthliness hovers round a pendulum than any merely mechanical trick-movements could impart. Then the merest commonplace of the detective tapping his pencil in the same time—the boy trying in vain to ignore it—increases the strain, till the audience has well-nigh the hallucinations of the victim. Then the bold tapping of the detective's foot, who would do all his accusing without saying a word, and the startling coincidence of the owl hoot-hooting outside the window to the same measure, bring us close to the final breakdown. These realistic material actors are as potent as the actual apparitions of the dead man that preceded them. Those visions prepared the mind to invest trifles with significance. The pencil and the pendulum conducting themselves in an apparently everyday fashion, satisfy in a far nobler way the thing in the cave-man attending the show that made him take note in other centuries of the rope that began to hang the butcher, the fire that began to burn the stick, and the stick that began to beat the dog.

Now the play takes a higher demoniacal plane reminiscent of Poe's Bells. The boy opens the door. He peers into the darkness. There he sees them. They are the nearest to the sinister Poe quality of any illustrations I recall that attempt it. "They are neither man nor woman, they are neither brute nor human; they are ghouls." The scenes are designed with the architectural dignity that the first part of this chapter has insisted wizard trappings should take on. Now it is that the boy confesses and the Poe story ends.

Then comes what the photoplay people call the punch. It is discussed at the end of chapter nine. It is a kind of solar plexus blow to the sensibilities, certainly by this time an unnecessary part of the film. Usually every soul movement carefully built up to where the punch begins is forgotten in the material smash or rescue. It is not so bad in this case, but it is a too conventional proceeding for Griffith.

The boy flees interminably to a barn too far away. There is a siege by a posse, led by the detective. It is veritable border warfare. The Italian leads an unsuccessful rescue party. The unfortunate youth finally hangs himself. The beautiful Annabel bursts through the siege a moment too late; then, heart broken, kills herself. These things are carried out by good technicians. But it would have been better to have had the suicide with but a tiny part of the battle, and the story five reels long instead of six. This physical turmoil is carried into the spiritual world only by the psychic momentum acquired through the previous confession scene. The one thing with intrinsic pictorial heart-power is the death of Annabel by jumping off the sea cliff.

Then comes the awakening. To every one who sees the film for the first time it is like the forgiveness of sins. The boy finds his uncle still alive. In revulsion from himself, he takes the old man into his arms. The uncle has already begun to be ashamed of his terrible words, and has prayed for a contrite heart. The radiant Annabel is shown in the early dawn rising and hurrying to her lover in spite of her pride. She will bravely take back her last night's final word. She cannot live without him. The uncle makes amends to the girl. The three are in the inconsistent but very human mood of sweet forgiveness for love's sake, that sometimes overtakes the bitterest of us after some crisis in our days.

The happy pair are shown, walking through the hills. Thrown upon the clouds for them are the moods of the poet-lover's heart. They look into the woods and see his fancies of Spring, the things that he will some day write. These pageants might be longer. They furnish the great climax. They make a consistent parallel and contrast with the ghoul-visions that end with the confession to the detective. They wipe that terror from the mind. They do not represent Poe. The rabbits, the leopard, the fairies, Cupid and Psyche in the clouds, and the little loves from the hollow trees are contributions to the original poetry of the eye.

Finally, the central part of this production of the Avenging Conscience is no dilution of Poe, but an adequate interpretation, a story he might have written. Those who have the European respect for Poe's work will be most apt to be satisfied with this section, including the photographic texture which may be said to be an authentic equivalent of his prose. How often Poe has been primly patronized for his majestic quality, the wizard power which looms above all his method and subject-matter and furnishes the only reason for its existence!

For Griffith to embroider this Poe Interpretation in the centre of a fairly consistent fabric, and move on into a radiant climax of his own that is in organic relation to the whole, is an achievement indeed. The final criticism is that the play is derivative. It is not built from new material in all its parts, as was the original story. One must be a student of Poe to get its ultimate flavor. But in reading Poe's own stories, one need not be a reader of any one special preceding writer to get the strange and solemn exultation of that literary enchanter. He is the quintessence of his own lonely soul.

Though the wizard element is paramount in the Poe episode of this film, the appeal to the conscience is only secondary to this. It is keener than in Poe, owing to the human elements before and after. The Chameleon producer approximates in The Avenging Conscience the type of mystic teacher, discussed in the twentieth chapter: "The Prophet-Wizard."