The Black Viper

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Movie
Original title The Black Viper
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1908
length 10 mins
Rod
Director David W. Griffith ,
Wallace McCutcheon Jr.
production American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
camera Arthur Marvin ,
GW Bitzer
occupation

The Black Viper ( German : The Black Viper ) is an American crime film by the directors David W. Griffith and Wallace McCutcheon Jr. from 1908 . The silent film was produced and distributed by the Biograph Company .

action

Jenny, a worker at the local mill, is one of the last employees to leave the company at the end of the day. She is expected at the exit by the "black viper", a violent gang member. He presses Jenny, but she rejects him and is then knocked down by him. While Jenny is lying on the ground and the Viper kicks her, Jenny's friend Mike appears to save her. Mike beats up the assailant who swears revenge on the couple.

In the evening Jenny and Mike go for a walk. The Viper has now secured the support of his gang members in carrying out a plan of revenge. They follow the couple in a horse and cart to a lonely, secluded place. There they attack their victims together. Mike is overwhelmed, tied up and kidnapped, Jenny is able to escape. The gang members manage the bound and gagged Mike on their car up a steep slope and carry him up.

In the meantime, Jenny has informed the helpers that together, also in a horse-drawn carriage, they are chasing the kidnappers. They arrive at the slope that the kidnappers and their victim have already climbed halfway. As the rescuers set out on foot, boulders are thrown at them from above. The kidnappers complete their ascent, drag Mike into a log cabin and set her on fire. However, Mike manages to cut his bonds and to get through a hatch onto the roof. There he is discovered by the viper and a fight breaks out between the two of them. Eventually they fall from the roof to the ground and continue their fight there. Mike can defeat the Viper and take his knife away from him. In the next moment, Jenny appears with the rescuers, when they approached the Viper's accomplices have already fled.

Production notes

The Black Viper was David W. Griffith's third director for Biograph and was appointed director the following month. For his predecessor, Wallace McCutcheon Jr., who was once again co-director here . the film was one of the last directorial works.

The film is a one-reeler on 35mm film that is 724 feet long . It was shot entirely off-studio in and around Shadyside, the southernmost part of Edgewater , New Jersey .

The Black Viper was first performed on July 21, 1908, and released on VHS video in the late 20th century.

criticism

The day after the first showing, a review of the film entitled The Black Viper appeared in Moving Picture World . A Human Serpent Crushed to Earth (German: The black viper. A human snake smashed on the ground ). The title is appropriate to the film. This is the representation of the sinister machinations of one of the most serpentine and poisonous creatures in human form that one could imagine.

In an anonymous letter to the editor dated April 27, 1910, to Moving Picture World , which was published in the July 2, 1910 issue, the author named 27 films whose public viewing had been banned by the Washington, DC Police Department . To them belong also The Black Viper , the other films themed mostly various forms of crime.

Iris Barry , film historian and curator of the Museum of Modern Art , mentioned The Black Viper only briefly in her biography of the director and described the film as "not particularly interesting".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b 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. 67, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dmovingor03chal~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D75~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  2. a b c The Black Viper in the Internet Movie Database (English) , accessed on January 4 of 2019.
  3. a b Iris Barry : DW Griffith. American Film Master (= Museum of Modern Art Film Library Series . Volume 1). Museum of Modern Art, New York NY 1940 (reprint, ibid 2002, ISBN 0-87070-683-7 ), p. 13.
  4. RJW: Some film Manufacturers Slow to Rise to the standard of Modern Exactitude . In: The Moving Picture World , Volume 7, No. 1, July 2, 1910, p. 31, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dmoviwor07chal~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D33~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D .