User Reviews

D.W. Griffith remains well-known for a handful of feature-length silent films he directed. It's less well-known that he churned out a large number of much shorter films as well, ranging in tone and quality from crude comedies to sophisticated mini-dramas.

I found 'The House with Closed Shutters' hugely interesting for the performances of the actors. This film may well be the best surviving record of 19th-century stage-acting techniques. Griffith's background was in the theatre; when this movie was made, many Victorian actors were still performing. In this film, the actors largely seem to be using theatrical stage techniques, rather than a more natural film technique or the elaborately overwrought histrionics which modern audiences now regard as 'silent-film acting'.

SPOILERS AHEAD. This is one more Civil War drama which depicts the South as the good guys, or at least shows them sentimentally. (The only black character in evidence -- a servant -- is played by a white actor in burnt-cork makeup.) The Civil War has been declared: handsome young Charles joins up and puts on a Confederate lieutenant's uniform while his sister proudly displays the Confederate flag she's made. Then he eagerly marches off with his friends and fellow lieutenants, Wheeler and Carter, as they report to General Lee's campground. Although I can forgive these film-makers for failing to find an actor who resembles the actual Robert E Lee, the actor whom they do use here as Lee (Edwin August) is tricked out in a crepe beard that only just barely resembles the actual Lee's face foliage. Surely they could have got the beard right.

Lee asks for a volunteer to take a sealed despatch to the front. Charles volunteers and is given the message. At this point, his nerve fails. He goes home to his brandy flask and his mother; the latter immediately unseals the message (thanks, mum), reads it, and realises it's got to get to the front. She sends her cowardly drunken son to bed, while Charles's sister puts on his uniform, tucks her beautiful long hair down the back of his lieutenant's tunic, and rides off to deliver the message.

At this point, I noticed two oddities: the actress playing Charles's sister is significantly smaller and shorter than he is, yet his uniform fits her perfectly ... and, when she mounts his horse and rides off, her technique indicates that she's had plenty of experience riding astride, rather than sidesaddle. When did this delicate Southern belle of 1861 (when ladies rode sidesaddle, if they ever rode at all) ever get the experience?

In the brief but well-staged battle scene, Charles's sister is killed in battle while wearing his uniform ... and it's Charles who is reported dead. (No autopsy, I guess.) When this news reaches their mother, she decides that the family will be disgraced forever if Charles is ever seen alive, since his heroic death would then be known for a lie. When I'd got this far in reading the title cards, I figured there was only one possible solution: Charles would have to put on crinolines and hoop skirts, and spend the rest of his life impersonating his sister. (Charley's Antebellum?) All joking aside: this melodrama takes place in the pre-tech era when a man could change his identity simply by taking a new name and relocating to someplace where nobody knew him before. It makes no sense for Charles to become a lifelong shut-in, rather than simply going away. Nor do Charles and his mother devise any plan to explain the permanent disappearance of Charles's sister.

Worse luck, Charles's mother orders Old Black Joe to shutter the windows forever. Years pass. Charles and his mother acquire some ridiculous old-age makeup, and the white powder in the actress's hair seems to have spread to her clothes. Charles's friends Wheeler and Carter -- thinking him long dead and now themselves likewise in bad old-age makeup -- show up to put flowers on his grave. These two actors start emoting in unison, as if they were Thomson and Thompson in a live-action Tintin movie.

My review of 'The House with Closed Shutters' has been quite sarky, but I found much of this short movie fascinating: namely, when the actors were emoting as if they were Victorian stage performers, and when the bad makeup and other production effects weren't getting in their way. This movie's good points definitely outweigh its bad points, and I'll rate it 7 out of 10.

Obviously D.W. Griffith didn't begin his directorial career as "the Master". With all the silent films I have seen, I have never seen one that encapsulates everything that people sneer at and remember about those "crazy, creaky old flickers" but now I have! Not one of the cast could be picked out as having any idea of what cinema acting is all about - arms flailing, gestures are huge and the make up is phoney - and Griffith can take his share of the blame. The thing that stands out though is the (for 1910) complicated narrative, the striving to tell a pretty complex story and almost succeeding. Sure the heroine generally behaves as though she has St. Vitus Dance but may well have been trying to emphasize her exuberance and courage. The worst acting honours definitely went to the mother who seemed to have a set pattern of gestures and really came into her own when she was laying down the law!!

By the first title I think Griffith was indicating that Walthall's character was cowardly, enjoyed drinking to duty and was only shamed into enlisting because of the glory his friends were receiving at the hands of his sister who was dancing around with the flag in patriotic fervour. The look on the faces of his friends when he is picked as the "hardiest man" for the top secret mission shows they know his character and that he is not up to the job.

When he finds himself in the midst of enemy soldiers he goes to pieces, gets drunk and returns home a blubbering mess. It is now up to sis to don his uniform and complete the mission which she does at the cost of her life. Amidst the high melodrama there is the symbolic use of the confederate flag as the daughter goes into enemy territory to retrieve the fallen flag, reminiscent of "the Little Colonel" putting the flag into the cannon in "The Birth of a Nation". The last few minutes did go a bit overboard as far as credibility goes - the cowardly son and his mother growing grey as the sister's suitors forever lay wreaths at the door but I don't agree with the reviewer about the sister's horsemanship. Living on a plantation she would have been completely at home on the back of a horse.

Interesting as well - in the sister's bedroom there was an AB on the wall. I had often heard of Biograph doing this in their films - it was their way of patenting their films to stop independent, fly by night companies from stealing their movies.

(Flash Review)

This was a bold tale about a soldier who loses his nerve during a battle and scurries back home like a coward. His sister feeling ashamed for him, dresses in his uniform and heads into battle for him! His mother, overtly ashamed by her son's lack of bravery, closes the shutters to her home as a sign of embarrassment. There are many scenes of solid drama and this is well-paced and the story is very understandable. I was impressed with the bravery and honor displayed by the woman in the film…even more so in 1910. Nice early story.

I can't say I've seen a whole lot of DW Griffith's films because I've only seen four (and then this one) and the guy made like 300 of them. Some difficulties in this review deal with the fact that I kind of generalize my statements to his oeuvre when I haven't seen much but a tiny percent of them. So my apologies beforehand.

This film strikes me as one of the more real and humble versions of his work. His women-in-distress films are well-made and interesting, and his Civil War and southern films are well-done too, but of course the poor guy's cinema is plagued with the hindsight knowledge about a political philosophy that lost a war and has been in decline since.

This film seems much more personal and humanistic to the films of his that I've seen, and I'm glad to know it because it opens Griffith's work up to further audience. To be sure, lack of courage and grief occurs often in war (and should), and stuff like the events in this film actually happened all the time during the Civil War.

This movie is sort of an American Mulan, showing that sometimes the women had to take up the banner and press forward men's bravery. The main story about the foolish brother definitely reinforces the Man's Man aspect of what war should be regarded as, but again, this kind of stuff happened a lot. This film is pretty tragic in its remembrance of that.

--PolarisDiB

I love D.W. Griffith's short film work more than his features, which tend to be overblown and self-indulgent. The House with Closed Shutters (1910) is among his most memorable work from this early period.

The picture's story is pure Gothic: a Confederate soldier turns coward and his patriotic sister goes to war in his place to salvage the family honor. She dies a hero and the family allows her to be buried in the son's name, while they keep the son locked in the house under the guise of being his sister, whose suitors believe has gone mad with grief for her brother.

Though the acting is overdone (which would not be cast out of film until the mid-1910s), the atmosphere and sense of claustrophobia make Closed Shutters a memorable little movie. It has a haunting quality despite of (or perhaps enhanced by) its primitive presentation.