Message films: the early days

Even when movies were in their infancy, political, religious and other groups realized that cinema was a great tool to get their message across to mass audiences.

Before America entered World War I in 1916, a huge range of issues was explored in cinema -- including tuberculosis, abortion, temperance, child labor and organized crime. As cinema became more sophisticated after the war, so did its social content.

But most such early films have been unseen by modern audiences -- until now. The National Film Preservation Foundation’s new “Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934,� arriving Tuesday, is a remarkable four-disc set featuring 48 movies from that era that saw tremendous social upheaval in the U.S.

These films, which run from less than a minute to more than two hours, were preserved by the George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Archives and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Almost every film has an illuminating commentary track from film and social historians, as well as a new musical score.

The films are divided into social topics: “The City Reformed,� “New Women,� “Toil and Tyranny� and “Americans in the Making.� Among the highlights:

“The Black Hand: True Story of a Recent Occurrence in the Italian Quarter of New York� from 1906 is considered the earliest surviving Mafia film. Just as with the majority of the films of its time, the plot was quite literally ripped from the headlines -- an Italian immigrant butcher who ran a shop on Bleecker Street was being forced by the Mafia to pay up $700 or his shop would be destroyed. The butcher, though, didn’t cave in to their demands and went to the cops. The film, which uses crude sets as well as several locations near the actual butcher shop, was shot just a month after the butcher’s story made the news.

“The Voice of the Violin� from 1909 is D.W. Griffith’s melodrama on terrorist bombings in New York -- it’s considered the earliest surviving film dealing with terrorist cells. The film revolves around a German music teacher living in New York who loves his wealthy violin student and wants to marry her. But when she shuns his advances because of his social status, he joins his anarchist friend’s political group, where he is chosen to bomb the house of the woman he loves. Griffith had only been making movies for eight months when he directed “Voice of the Violin.�

“Hope: A Red Cross Seal Story� from 1912 was sponsored by the National Assn. for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. When the Thomas A. Edison company produced this short, TB was the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. This dramatic film showed that TB wasn’t a poor person’s disease, as the daughter of a wealthy small-town banker contracts the ailment and must leave her hometown to go to New York because there is no sanitarium in town.

“The Soul of Youth.� William Desmond Taylor is best known in cinema history as the filmmaker whose 1922 murder has never been solved. Unfortunately, his work as a director has been practically forgotten. Thankfully, his directorial skill is on display in 1920’s “The Soul of Youth,� a heart-rending drama that revolves around a young boy who is abandoned as a newborn, forced to live in a cold orphanage and homeless on the streets.

“Where Are My Children?� from 1916 is a provocative anti-abortion drama directed by Lois Weber, who at the time was the highest-paid director in Hollywood. Tyrone Power Sr. stars in the controversial film that was one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

“The Godless Girl� from 1928 was Cecil B. DeMille’s last silent film and one of his oddest. DeMille had just come off of one of his biggest films -- “King of Kings,� about the life of Jesus -- when he took on this wild tale of atheism in high school and juvenile reformatories. The film, which stars Lina Basquette as “Judy, the Godless Girl,� was the director’s biggest commercial flop of the era.

“Ramona: A Story of the White Man’s Injustice to the Indian� from 1910 was the most expensive film produced of its era. Directed by Griffith, the 16-minute drama considerably diluted Helen Hunt Jackson’s famous novel about the ill-fated love of a mission Indian and an aristocratic Mexican girl. The film, which stars a young Mary Pickford and Henry B. Walthall, who later starred in Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,� boasts beautiful locations -- it was shot by Griffith’s longtime cameraman Billy Bitzer. And Griffith shows a lot more sensitivity toward the American Indian than he did for African Americans five years later in “Birth of a Nation.�

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