Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916)

Originally posted to Facebook on 8/17/2016

Gretchen the Greenhorn was the fourth film we watched from 1916. It clocked in at under an hour, which was a welcome change of pace after the twelve-part serial Judex and the three-plus hours of Intolerance. It starred Dorothy Gish -- whom we’d previously seen in Judith of Bethulia, along with Lillian Gish, though both of them had tiny parts -- and several other actors whom we’d seen just previously in Intolerance, including Elmo Lincoln, who would later become the first screen Tarzan. The main villain, when he finally shows up, is played by Euguene Pallette, who is not a household name, but who appeared in small parts in hundreds of films, including many classics, up through the forties.

It was directed by Sydney and Chester Franklin, each of whom went on directing well into the sound era, Sydney more prominently than Chester. This film was much more pedestrian than some of the films we’ve been seeing lately -- it uses none of the visual pyrotechnics of Intolerance, for example -- but it is well-made, and probably more typical of the sort of film that was being shown at the time. It is the story of a Dutch immigrant, Gish, joining her father in America, where he works as an engraver. (Ben asked what a greenhorn was -- I told him it was an old-fashioned word for newbie.) It has some superficial similarities to The Italian, from 1915, which we watched several weeks ago. But that movie was much more melodramatic and serious. This film is not a comedy per se, but it is the kind of movie where you can be relatively sure that everything winds up well in the end. It also subscribes heavily to the melting pot idea of America -- the neighbors in their New York tenement are Irish and Italian, with various other ethnicities appearing as well. (Needless to say when people from various ethnicities begin appearing in century old films, there is always the potential for disaster, but luckily nothing rose to the “pause the film and contextualize for the children” category.) In addition to this backdrop, there is a counterfeiting plot, some gunplay, and a romance as well.

Our next film will be The Matrimaniac, our fifth and final movie from 1916. It will be the first film in which we’ll see Douglas Fairbanks as the male lead. The link to our upcoming films, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT