Mar 11 2009
“Those Awful Hats” by D.W. Griffith
Yesterday’s post of Buster Keaton’s “Cops” got me thinking about a lot of the early silent short films that have stuck with me from when I initially started studying film in school (which was a little while back now). But there are a few films of this era that have always struck me as incredibly innovative for their period, simply for the vision it took to create them, and how difficult it can be to recognize the innovative qualities of these films knowing what we know now.
It’s easy to blow off something like “The Great Train Robbery” as slightly dull and standard, something you’d see a film student shoot that adheres to our pre-conceptions of chase scenes and narrative structure. Nonetheless, that film was an incredible act of creativity for it’s time. It doesn’t take a brilliant cinema historian to recognize that, but it’s easy to lose sight of those qualities.
Thus we arrive at my short film selection of the day: “Those Awful Hats.” This is a 1909 short by the legendary D.W. Griffith. Griffith is easily one of the most important figures in the development of the cinematic arts. This short, similar to “The Great Train Robbery,” doesn’t offer a whole lot when placed against shorts like those of Kenneth Anger or Maya Deren, who still remain incredibly innovative to this day. Yet, within this film you can begin to see the style and editing technique that would make Griffith such a seminal figure. It’s also a pretty funny film, in that early slapstick fashion.
Of course the debate still rages over Griffith’s place in film history because of Birth of a Nation, which is simultaneously viewed as an incredible master work that developed the standard editing style that is still used today, and an artifact of an era when racism was widely accepted. It is a film whose thematic content is nothing anyone would stand by, and the film is epic, and more than a little tedious. Nonetheless, it’s a film that is monumentally important in the scope of cinematic history.
Anyway, on to “Those Awful Hats”:
