At the Crossroads of Life
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | At the Crossroads of Life |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1908 |
| length | 8 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wallace McCutcheon Jr. |
| script | David Wark Griffith |
| production | American Mutoscope and Biograph Company |
| camera |
GW Bitzer , Arthur Marvin |
| occupation | |
| |
At the Crossroads of Life , sometimes shortened to Crossroads of Life ( German , meaning: At the crossroads of life ), is an American melodrama by the director Wallace McCutcheon Jr. from 1908 . The screenplay was written by David Wark Griffith , the silent film is a Biograph Company production .
action
The action is set in Victorian New England . Linda Arvidson plays the daughter of a clergyman, played by Edward Dillon. All of her upbringing was geared towards isolating her from any harmful influence of the real world and preparing her for a life as a mother and housewife. With her friend (Florence Auer) she devours theater magazines found by chance, which give her a glimpse of the supposedly glamorous outside world. Both of them reproduce the stage scenes described and are surprised by their father during the performance of a crude burlesque . The father is deeply shocked and outraged. There is a heated argument between father and daughter, which eventually drives them out of the house.
The daughter applies in New York to be accepted into an opera choir . She survived the audition and was accepted into the choir. Due to her attractive appearance, her upbringing and her beautiful voice, she quickly makes a career on stage, but her life is lonely and joyless. That she is flattered by an unloved admirer doesn't make it any more pleasant. Arvidson longs to be able to return to her family, but the father has torn up all of her letters unread. The only option that seems to be left to her is to give in to her admirer's wooing and to lead a life with him in the world of theater.
Desperate, Arvidson sends her father a telegram asking him to come to her performance the following evening. In fact, the father attends the performance; he is deeply moved by the performance and the atmosphere of the theater. The daughter watches him through the peephole in the stage curtain . After the performance, the father comes backstage and hugs his daughter, while the spurned lover looks at the reconciliation scene with undisguised anger.
Recovery
At the Crossroads of Life was registered with the United States Copyright Office on June 20, 1908 as the Crossroads of Life . The film was first screened with the full title on July 3, 1908. It was released on VHS video in the late 20th century and on DVD in 2009.
Scenes from At the Crossroads of Life were included in the humorous short film Those Awful Hats in 1909 , where they form the background of the plot as a cinema screening.
A copy of the film, restored with the help of the Lillian Gish Trust for Film Preservation , is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City . The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive of the University of California, Berkeley and the EYE Film Instituut Nederland in Amsterdam have further copies . A copy is in the Paper Print Collection of the US Library of Congress .
Script and direction
For David W. Griffith, working on At the Crossroads of Life marked a turning point. In 1907 he had tried to sell Edwin S. Porter of Edison Studios a script based on the opera Tosca . Instead, he was hired to star in a leading role in Rescued from an Eagle's Nest . At Biograph he was able to sell several scripts in 1908, including those for Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker and At the Crossroads of Life . He also played in Ostler Joe and At the Crossroads of Life . With the script, he had given director McCutcheon a chance that McCutcheon didn't take. The films of Wallace McCutcheon Jr. are, in contrast to those of his father , characterized by a poor production design, poor management of the actors and an overall poor quality. At the Crossroads of Life was one of his last films. It consisted of nine shots, all of which, with the exception of a brief outdoor shot, were shot from the same camera position. For Griffith, the film marked the end of a short acting career, although he continued to play small roles in his own films, and the beginning of his career as a director . Two months after filming At the Crossroads of Life , Griffith succeeded McCutcheon at Biograph.
reception
The day after the first showing, a review appeared in Moving Picture World that describes the film as a “ moving ” story. In addition to some comedic elements to lighten the gloomy mood, it offers a vivid picture of life behind the scenes.
For the American film historian Eileen Bowser, the importance of At the Crossroads of Life lies in showing the primitive conditions of film production of its time. She points out that Griffith brought his experience as an actor to his script and worked to save the film in front of the camera.
Technical details
The film is a one-reeler on 35mm film that is 778 feet long . It was filmed in a studio in New York City on June 2-4, 1908.
Web links
- At the Crossroads of Life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d At the Crossroads of Life. Biograph Story of a Young Girl's Willfulness (review). In: The Moving Picture World , Volume 3, No. 1, July 4, 1908, p. 11, digitized .
- ↑ a b At the Crossroads of Life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ^ Wallace McCutcheon Jr. At the Crossroads of Life. 1908 , Museum of Modern Art website , accessed January 2, 2019.
- ↑ Kemp R. Niver : Motion Pictures from the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection, 1894-1912 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1967, ISBN 978-0-520-00947-9 , p. 178.
- ^ Sarah Delahousse: Marion Leonard . In: Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall'Asta (eds.): Women Film Pioneers Project . Center for Digital Research and Scholarship. Columbia University Libraries, New York, NY 2013, September 27, 2013, accessed January 2, 2019.
- ^ A b Charles Silver: An Auteurist History of Film: “Lesser-Known Pioneers of Cinema,” Museum of Modern Art website, September 30, 2009, accessed January 2, 2019.
- ^ Stan Brakhage : The Brakhage Lectures. Georges Méliès, David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein . School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1972, ISBN 0-912844-04-3 , p. 28, PDF, 3.5 MB , accessed January 2, 2019.
- ↑ Iris Barry : DW Griffith. American Film Master (= Museum of Modern Art Film Library Series . Volume 1). Museum of Modern Art, New York NY 1940 (reprinted there in 2002, ISBN 0-87070-683-7 ), p. 11.