Pictures and the Picturegoer (October 1915 - March 1916)

•ICTURES AND THE PICTUREGOER "Week ending Oct. 2, 1915 Eighteen Thousand Actors IN A MIGHTY FILM SPECTACLE. "THE BIRTH OF A NATION" TO BE PRESENTED IN LONDON FOR THE FIRST TIME. IN The Birth of a Nation David W. Griffith, America's greatest cinema producer, has given us a motion picture spectacle that is unsurpassed and seemingly unsurpassable. The creation of an artist and master technician, it is bound to create a tremendous sensation wherever the picture is shown. The play deals with the long struggle between North and South America, treating it in a thoroughly original manner, yet with an accuracy that is positively amazing. It gives a lucid and \ ivid explanation and description of the Civil War, and shows, after a terrible period of travail and bloodshed, the ultimate birth of the nation — the nation that has given us David W. Griffith, and through him so many photographic and dramatic effects seen on the motion picture screen to-day. In spite of the stupendous theme, the story is so ingeniously constructed that in it evolve a little knot of love stories :is well as the personal histories of some of America's greatest men. In a combination of adventure, romance, tragedy, comedy, and spectacle we gradually and eventually witness the birth of a nation — the light which followed the darkness, the joy which came after pain. With The Clansman, an historical novel by the Rev. Thomas Dixon, as foundation, D. W. Griffith built up this mighty spectacle, a drama so vast in conception that it is entirely without parallel in any branch of Art. The Story of the Picture. A cargo of African slaves landed in North America was the first cause of the troubles which preceded the birth of a great nation. The South declared it would secede if in I860 a Republican President was elected. That President, Abraham Lincoln, issued a call for 75,000 volunteers. For the first time in American annals he used the Federal power to subdue the sovereignty of individual states. The story begins in Pennsylvania, where the Stoneman boys had been guests at Piedmont, S.C., of their boarding-school chums, the Cameron boys. Phil Stoneman and Margaret Cameron, " fair as a flower," had looked, longed, and loved. Ben Cameron had never mot Elsie Stoneman, yet the portrait of her which he had pilfered from her brother Phil seemed just the deares1 . sweetest thing in all the world — Elsie was the girl of Ben's dreams. The younger lads of the two families simply romped together. Two of the most charming and lovable of all the Cameron clan were the Doctor and Mrs. Cameron's youngest daughter, Flora. Immediately upon the outbreak of war Phil and Tod Stoneman were summoned to fight for the Stars and Stripes, whilst Hen Cameron and his two younger brothers wore to tight for the Stars and Bars. The years dragged wearily along. MAE MARSH, as Flora, the "little pet sister," whose leap from a rocky height to a tragic death shows well the strength and daring of this clever actress. HENRY WALTHALL, as Bon Cameron, the " Little Colonel." The loading character, it is, of course, made much of by this line actor. full of conflict, and strife, and bloodshed Piedmont gaily entered the struggle but ruin and devastation followed, the town getting a foretaste of plunder and pillage in the raid of a mixed body of white and coloured guerillas. Then Fortune began to favour the Union cause. Southern wealth and resources were burned or commandeered by Sherman on his march to the coast. Of the Cameron lads, two perished in battle, and one of them face to face with Ids dying chum Tod. Grant was pressing the Confederacy in the famous campaign around Petersburg. Just ■when Confederate supplies were running low a provision train was cut off, and Ben Cameron, now known as the " Little Colonel," was called upon by Genera'. Lee to lead a counter-attack, divert the enemy, and aid in the rescue of the train. Here we see the panorama of a huge battlefield stretching over miles of hills, plain, and valley. Colonel Cameron and his men formed for the advance and charged over broken ground, the grim harvest of Death sweeping most of them away. Then came a bayonet-rush of the faithful few right up to the trenches and a frightful hand-grapple with the enemy. Cameron, the sole survivor, gained the crest of the Federal works, but fell wounded into the arms of Captain Phil Stoneman, U.S.A.. his one-time bosom friend. Prisoner in a Washington hospital, Ben Cameron slowly recovered from his wounds, to meet Elsie Stoneman. the original of the dagnerrotype he had treasured so long, who appeared in the role of volunteer nurse. Elsie met Ben's mother at the hospital, and both women later paid a visit to Abraham Lincoln to beg him to clear the " Little Colonel" of an odious charge. The President readily agreed, and handed Mrs. Cameron her son's papers of release. To Austin Stoneman. who was Elsie's father, and loader of Congress, it seemed that Lincoln was adopting measures with the prostrate South that were ridiculously mild. *• I shall treat them as if they had never been away.'' was Lincoln's gentle reply to Stoneman's demand that the leaders be hanged and measures of reprisal adopted. Stoneman, in his anger, determined to establish the complete political, social, and domestic equality of the negroes, and already he was training a half prot&fi— one Silas Lynch— to go South as " leader of his people." The war ended with the encirclement of the Southern Army, and then there ensued a terrible tragedy -the assassination of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, in the crowded scene of a festival performance at Ford's Theatre on the night of April 1 1th. 1S05. The South felt, and quite rightly too, that it had lost its best friend. # * # * A few rears later the climax w«