Another kind of Crowd Picture is The Battle, an old Griffith Biograph,
first issued in 1911, before Griffith's name or that of any actor in
films was advertised. Blanche Sweet is the leading lady, and Charles H.
West the leading man. The psychology of a bevy of village lovers is
conveyed in a lively sweet-hearting dance. Then the boy and his comrades
go forth to war. The lines pass between hand-waving crowds of friends
from the entire neighborhood. These friends give the sense of patriotism
in mass. Then as the consequence of this feeling, as the special agents
to express it, the soldiers are in battle. By the fortunes of war the
onset is unexpectedly near to the house where once was the dance.
The boy is at first a coward. He enters the old familiar door. He appeals
to the girl to hide him, and for the time breaks her heart. He goes forth
a fugitive not only from battle, but from her terrible girlish anger.
But later he rallies. He brings a train of powder wagons through fires
built in his path by the enemy's scouts. He loses every one of his men,
and all but the last wagon, which he drives himself. His return with that
ammunition saves the hard-fought day.
And through all this, glimpses of the battle are given with a splendor
that only Griffith has attained.
Blanche Sweet stands as the representative of the bevy of girls in the
house of the dance, and the whole body social of the village. How the
costumes flash and the handkerchiefs wave around her! In the battle the
hero represents the cowardice that all the men are resisting within
themselves. When he returns, he is the incarnation of the hardihood they
have all hoped to display. Only the girl knows he was first a failure.
The wounded general honors him as the hero above all. Now she is radiant,
she cannot help but be triumphant, though the side of the house is blown
out by a shell and the dying are everywhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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