Griffith and the Yiddish Silents

This week’s second evening of silent film at West Seattle’s Kenyon Hall will feature a program of Yiddish themed shorts and one feature from the National Center for Jewish Film. Musical accompaniment will again be performed by Donald Sosin. Three early works from the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company include two directed by D. W. Griffith, A Child of The Ghetto (1910), Romance of A Jewess (1908), and Old Isaacs the Pawnbroker (1908), directed by Wallace McCutcheon with a scenario written by Griffith. The feature, Hungry Hearts (1922) is a Sam Goldwyn production. A common thread connecting all three Biograph shorts is the cinematography of legendary cameraman G. W. ‘Billy’ Bitzer.

The Cameraman

Billy Bitzer’s career in motion pictures began at the beginning. He was there when the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company was formed and helped design the cameras he was so adept at using. By the time D. W. Griffith began directing, Bitzer was a seasoned veteran. He literally became the instrument of Griffith’s imagination. Together, they created the grammar of motion pictures, the filtered shot, the fade-out, the matte shot, as well as blocking, make-up and lighting techniques still used today. In his long career, Bitzer filmed wars, Presidents, prizefights, disasters, celebrations and along with Griffith, composed the inaugural opus of theatrical film. He filmed his first newsreel for Biograph in 1896 when their catalog still numbered in the double-digits! As motion pictures immerged from their infancy with Lumiere and Edison, Billy Bitzer became the first great cinematographer.

Here are synopsis of the four films, provided by Kenyon Hall.

A Child of the Ghetto
USA, 1910, 15 minutes (35mm/16mm/video)
Silent with English intertitles
Director: D. W. Griffith
This short tale of Lower East Side life captures the hustle and bustle of Rivington Street through the lens of legendary Hollywood director D.W. Griffith. The film's melodramatic silent movie plot is distinguished by the fact that it was one of the earliest motion pictures to treat an interfaith romance unproblematically. "Rivington Street was the lively one, eternally jammed with pushcart peddlers hawking their wares. They had every imaginable commodity, from a needle to a wedding outfit... Emotional, tempestuous, harrowing Rivington Street was perpetually a steaming, bubbling pot of human flesh." - D. W. Griffith

Hungry Hearts
USA, 1922, 80 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
Silent with English intertitles
Director: E. Mason Hopper
Restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film with the cooperation of Samuel Goldwyn Pictures and the British Film Institute Based on the short stories of Anzia Yezierska, the first writer to bring stories of American Jewish women to a mainstream audience, Hungry Hearts focuses on the members of the Levin family who emigrate from Eastern Europe to New York City's Lower East Side. Abraham, the pious father learned in religion but uninterested in business, has difficulty making a living and adjusting to life in America. The daughter Sara scrubs floors in the tenement in order to earn money and "become a somebody." The mother Hannah, a noble matriarch, scrimps and saves to paint her dingy kitchen white only to have her landlord raise the rent because of the improvements. Filmed on location on the Lower East Side, this bittersweet classic captures the hopes and hardships of Jewish immigrants in the New World. "Hungry Hearts may be more of an entertainment than a social film, but its slice-of-life approach gives it unusual value. The picture of downtrodden Jews may border on the sentimental, but the feeling is right." - Kevin Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence

Old Isaacs the Pawnbroker
USA, 1908, 10 minutes, silent, B&W (16mm/video)
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Director: Wallace McCutcheon
Script: D.W. Griffith
A small girl in an urban slum goes out to seek aid for her sick andstarving mother. She goes first to the offices of the Amalgamated Association of Charities, where she is caught up in red tape as the case workers ask questions and offer no immediate aid. Desperate, the little girl then goes to a neighborhood pawnshop hoping to get some money for food. She brings in a pair of old shoes which the pawnbroker's assistant rejects. Then she returns with her doll. This innocent gesture of selflessness attracts the attention of old Isaac, who runs the shop. Hearing the little girl's story, he sets out for her apartment where he stops the men who are trying to evict the sick woman. He pays the rent, provides food and medical care, and even gives
the girl a big new doll.

Romance of a Jewess
1908, 10 minutes, B&W, silent (16mm/video)
Director: D.W. Griffith
This early D.W. Griffith short shows the director's interest in Jewish ghetto life, portrayed here with sympathy and sentimentality. The melodramatic plot involves the conflict between generations that life in the New World brought to the Jewish family. Lower East Side street scenes blend actors from the Biograph Studios (such as the young Gladys Eagan) with actual street vendors and passersby in such a natural way that it is obvious they were shot candidly with a hidden camera. The film anticipates Jewish immigrant dramas like The Jazz Singer and His People . Griffith explored similar themes in Old Isaacs the Pawnbroker and A Child of the Ghetto.