When a white woman rejects the advances of an assimilated Native American, he goes native and plans her abduction. A middling D. W. Griffith short with an overlong chase sequence that lacks any kind of tension. Some nice photography of the countryside, though.
4 Reviews
Not London calling this time....
kekseksa8 March 2017
As is quite clear from the summary, this D. W. Griffith film has nothing whatever (except for the coincidence of the title) to do with the 1903 Jack London novel.It is rather a distinctly racist tale of a "civilised" native American who falls in love with a white girl ("You may be sure" says Movie Picture World, with a tinge of irony however "that he is indignantly repulsed....for his presumption") goes rather abruptly "native" again as a result of his disappointment and after a few slurps of some handily-available "firewater" (he takes the bottle with him to share with his muckers in the forest). The band of drunken Indians go in chase of the girl (she is out for a ride) but, when reminded of the spirit in the sky, the chastened hero refrains from raping her.
Native Americans come somewhat higher in Griffith's ethnic pecking-order than African Americans and many of his films treat them sympathetically and even show an awareness of their ill-treatment. While for Griffith African Americans simply had to be kept in tier place, native Americans were at least in theory "civilisable". Coupling with the savage, in US tradition, was not entirely desirable but it was not totally unthinkable (it was hardly possible to deny the fact that western pioneers frequently found themselves native American wives). There was of course in reality even more miscegenation where African Americans were considered but this was largely furtive and had to be furiously denied. There is no question here of the college graduate Redfeather being marriageable but his ability to abstain (albeit with difficulty) from raping a white girl might itself be considered to represent, in Griffith's terms, a slight advance on the eugenic ladder.
For good measure, the film also contains an appalling caricature of a Chinese servant.
The problem of native Americans caught between the two worlds was a very real one but this is a particularly unserious and insensitive treatment of the subject, certainly when compared with the much more interesting later films on the same theme made by Thomas Ince (the excellent The Lieutenant's Last Fight of 1912 and The Last of the Line 1914) Jack London was not by any means the first novelist to be adapted for the screen. One might cite Dickens (1901), Jules Verne (1902, 1907 Méliès), Jonathan Swift (1902, Méliès), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1903), Daniel Defoe (1903 Méliès), E. W. Hornung (1905), Victor Hugo (1905) and Lew Wallace (1907).
But London was certainly an early favourite of US film-makers and amongst the first contemporary novelists to have his work filmed. Kalem made a version of The Sea Wolf in 1907, D. W. Griffith did indeed produce a film in 1908 based on a London short story (For Love of Gold) and another in 1912 (Man's Genesis) and yet another in 1913 (Two Men of the Desert). Perhaps the most important London-fan amongst early film-makers was actor/director Hobart Bosworth who was an enormous admirer of the novelist, made a feature version of The Sea Wolf in 1913 and would go on to film a significant part of London's work (John Barleycorn, Martin Eden, The Valley of the Moon, An Odyssey of the North, Burning Daylight). The Call of the Wild was not filmed until 1923 (by Fred Jackman for Hal Roach).
Native Americans come somewhat higher in Griffith's ethnic pecking-order than African Americans and many of his films treat them sympathetically and even show an awareness of their ill-treatment. While for Griffith African Americans simply had to be kept in tier place, native Americans were at least in theory "civilisable". Coupling with the savage, in US tradition, was not entirely desirable but it was not totally unthinkable (it was hardly possible to deny the fact that western pioneers frequently found themselves native American wives). There was of course in reality even more miscegenation where African Americans were considered but this was largely furtive and had to be furiously denied. There is no question here of the college graduate Redfeather being marriageable but his ability to abstain (albeit with difficulty) from raping a white girl might itself be considered to represent, in Griffith's terms, a slight advance on the eugenic ladder.
For good measure, the film also contains an appalling caricature of a Chinese servant.
The problem of native Americans caught between the two worlds was a very real one but this is a particularly unserious and insensitive treatment of the subject, certainly when compared with the much more interesting later films on the same theme made by Thomas Ince (the excellent The Lieutenant's Last Fight of 1912 and The Last of the Line 1914) Jack London was not by any means the first novelist to be adapted for the screen. One might cite Dickens (1901), Jules Verne (1902, 1907 Méliès), Jonathan Swift (1902, Méliès), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1903), Daniel Defoe (1903 Méliès), E. W. Hornung (1905), Victor Hugo (1905) and Lew Wallace (1907).
But London was certainly an early favourite of US film-makers and amongst the first contemporary novelists to have his work filmed. Kalem made a version of The Sea Wolf in 1907, D. W. Griffith did indeed produce a film in 1908 based on a London short story (For Love of Gold) and another in 1912 (Man's Genesis) and yet another in 1913 (Two Men of the Desert). Perhaps the most important London-fan amongst early film-makers was actor/director Hobart Bosworth who was an enormous admirer of the novelist, made a feature version of The Sea Wolf in 1913 and would go on to film a significant part of London's work (John Barleycorn, Martin Eden, The Valley of the Moon, An Odyssey of the North, Burning Daylight). The Call of the Wild was not filmed until 1923 (by Fred Jackman for Hal Roach).
Griffith Abandons the Proscenium Arch
boblipton7 February 2018
Despite the IMDb credit, has nothing to do with Jack London's novel. It's a D.W. Griffith movie about how Amerindian Charles Inslee has just graduated from college with honors, and a football hero to boot. When he pays court to Florence Lawrence, however, she rejects him and leaves. He tears off his civilized clothes, dons his Comanche get-up, gets drunk with his fellow braves and kidnaps Miss Lawrence.
The copy I looked at on Youtube was on old paper print copy and was, as you might expect, not very easy to watch. It's only in the past twenty years that very watchable prints have been struck. However, even though the acting in this one is still of the waving-the-hands-about variety, it's well shot for the era, in about a dozen scenes, most of them outdoor. Although Griffith had not abandoned the proscenium arch entirely for his movies, given a story that called for a subject that could be set outside, he and his cameraman (here Arthur Marvin) felt no need for it.
The copy I looked at on Youtube was on old paper print copy and was, as you might expect, not very easy to watch. It's only in the past twenty years that very watchable prints have been struck. However, even though the acting in this one is still of the waving-the-hands-about variety, it's well shot for the era, in about a dozen scenes, most of them outdoor. Although Griffith had not abandoned the proscenium arch entirely for his movies, given a story that called for a subject that could be set outside, he and his cameraman (here Arthur Marvin) felt no need for it.
Jack London and D.W. Griffith
Single-Black-Male24 October 2003
Jack London (who is regarded as the first celebrity writer of the 20th century) had his work brought to the screen by D.W. Griffith in this one-reeler film. Although other writers subsequently followed the same fate, Jack London was arguably the first living writer to have his work adapted for the new medium.
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