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First StepsFilm 17 of 17
The Lonedale Operator
Blanche Sweet, fifteen, takes her father's telegraph key at a lonely depot; two tramps want the payroll, and she wires her engineer suitor while holding the office.
Silent
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Overview
D. W. Griffith, Biograph, released 23 March 1911, scenario by Mack Sennett, Bitzer on camera. Blanche Sweet, fifteen, takes her father's telegraph key at a lonely depot; two tramps want the payroll, and she wires her engineer suitor while holding the office. More than a hundred shots cut the office, the tracks, and the train. MoMA restored camera-negative tinting (blue for night) and the original titles. The close-up that ends the ruse is a wrench, not a pistol.
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First Steps
The job: race. Griffith cuts the office, the tracks, and the train against each other, more than a hundred shots in one reel, until the rescue is a rhythm. The last close-up, a wrench held like a pistol, is the whole trick of editing in one object.
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