Falsely Accused!
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Falsely Accused! |
,_film_still_with_David_W._Griffith_(left_man_with_screen).jpg) | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1908 |
| length | 11 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wallace McCutcheon sr. |
| production | Edison Studios |
| camera | GW Bitzer |
| occupation | |
| |
Falsely Accused! (German: wrongly accused! ), is an American criminal and judicial drama by the director Wallace McCutcheon sr. from 1908 . The silent film is a production of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company and shows the later film director David Wark Griffith in his second film role.
action
A wealthy chemist and inventor has built a film camera with the help of which he wants to revolutionize the world of film. The action begins with the inventor in his library studying the plans for his invention. He is called away by a telegram. He puts his plans in the safe, but in his hurry fails to lock the safe. At first this seems insignificant, because his wife and daughter are in the room.
The daughter is being courted by a young man to whom the daughter is not only devoted, but who also enjoys the goodwill of her parents. A despicable rival also seeks the daughter's proximity, but there is no doubt that he is only interested in the parents' fortunes, which will be further increased by the new camera technology. Although his daughter has given him no hope, he wants to conquer her at all costs. He appears in the house shortly after his father's departure and is shown to the library by the maid. He is supposed to wait there while the maid informs the daughter of the house of his visit.
While the visitor is alone in the library, he opens and searches the safe and puts the valuable plans in his pocket. When the daughter appears in the library, he renews his declarations of love, but is rejected by the daughter. When he gets intrusive, she slaps him in the face and tells him to leave the house. He leaves, but swears vengeance as he goes out.
The father returns home and goes to his workshop to carry out the final tests of his invention. While he is inserting the film and starting the drive, the malicious admirer of his daughter appears and asks for her hand. Here too, of course, he is rejected and threatens his father too, waving the stolen documents in front of the old man's face. This also gets angry and jumps at the thief's neck while meter by meter of the film runs through the camera.
In the meantime, the daughter in the library reports to her first suitor about the encounter with his competitors. When she parted, she assured him that he didn't have to worry about the rival. Then she goes into the workshop and, to her horror, finds her father's body stabbed to death with a letter opener from his own desk. She kneels down next to her dead father, murder weapon in hand. She is found by the rejected suitor, who appears with other men and accuses her of parricide. Appearances speak against her, and so the daughter is arrested and taken to prison. Everyone turns away from her except her old mother and her fiancé. He visits her in prison and promises to do everything possible to prove her innocence.
The fiancé searches for clues in the workshop. Through his acquaintance with the deceased, he has a little knowledge of film technology and the work in the photo laboratory. So he discovers the exposed film in the new camera and develops a short strip in the darkroom. He reacts to the depicted scene with the exclamation My god! Just as I thought (German: My God! As I thought it would be ). He rushes with the film magazine to his father's assistant, who develops the entire film and makes a positive print.
With this convincing piece of evidence, he goes to the court hearing and, with the permission of the presiding judge, projects his find onto an improvised screen. The scene proves the daughter's utter innocence and shows the real murderer in action. He is also in the courtroom and tries to escape during the screening, but is caught and arrested for his cowardly crime.
Production notes
David W. Griffith was in financial trouble in late 1907 after he and his wife, Linda Arvidson, lost their theater engagements. He had repeatedly tried to sell scripts to film studios but was turned away. Although Griffith shied away from film roles - at the time, identification as a film actor would have ended a theater career - he obeyed need and took on small roles in films for the Biograph Company . First he played the guest of a Russian court ball in Professional Jealousy , and in Falsely Accused! a policeman in the courtroom (the man on the left in the picture). This was followed by the third appearance on the screen in Rescued from an Eagle's Nest by the director Edwin S. Porter of Edison Studios in the lead role of the father who saves his child.
The film was shot on December 26th, 27th and 28th 1907 at Biograph Studios on 14th Street in Manhattan .
The reproduction of a film in a film is interesting from a production point of view. The Biograph Studios camera was not equipped for cartoons. In particular, no double exposure was possible because the film received its perforation when it was rotated. A second pass of the strip would have destroyed it. The recording of the film image shown was attached to the rear of the original film in the required size, which only showed the white canvas. The assembly of the film shown on the screen was only done in the copier when the film was reproduced, frame by frame. The film representations in the biograph productions Bobby's Kodak and Those Awful Hats were accomplished in a similar manner .
The 68 mm camera from Biograph Studios can be seen in one scene.
Falsely Accused! is a one-reeler on 35mm film that is 990 feet long .
The first cinema screening took place on January 18, 1908. A copy of the film is in the Museum of Modern Art Department of Film in New York City .
criticism
The Moving Picture World published a synopsis and brief review of Falsely Accused! In its February 1, 1908 issue . . The film is hailed as the most modern and as one of the most exciting films ever produced. The acting was perfect in every detail and yet any cruelty in the representation would have been carefully avoided. Elsewhere, a reviewer of the magazine writes that the film has a well-elaborated plot and that all scenes follow one another coherently. Overall, the film is a small masterpiece full of cinematic details.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Falsely Accused . In: The Moving Picture World , Volume 2, No. 3, January 18, 1908, p. 44, digitized .
- ^ David Mayer: Rescued from an eBay Site . In: Film History 2009, Volume 21, No. 4, pp. 336-345, JSTOR 40405945 .
- ↑ a b c Eileen Bowser: Griffith's film career before The Adventures of Dollie . In: Quarterly Review of Film Studies 1981, Volume 6, No. 1, doi : 10.1080 / 10509208109361075 .
- ↑ a b Falsely Accused! in the Internet Movie Database (English) , accessed on January 9 of 2019.
- ^ Wallace McCutcheon. Falsely Accused! 1908 , Museum of Modern Art website , accessed January 9, 2019.
- ↑ Our Visits . In: The Moving Picture World , Volume 2, No. 4, January 25, 1908, p. 57, digitized .