The Silent Cinema: D.W. Griffith’s Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)

Musketeers of Pig Alley

Directed by D.W. Griffith. Cast: Elmer Booth, Harry Carey, Lillian Gish, Clara T Bracy, Walter Miller, John T. Dillon, Madge Kirby, Robert Harron. Released October 21, 1912. Running time: 17 minutes.

While D.W. Griffith is rightfully known for his massive epics like “The Birth of a Nation” (1915) and “Intolerance” (1916), the foundation of his important work as a filmmaker can be found in the short subjects he made for Biograph after the turn of the century. Narrative film developed rather quickly after Edwin S. Porter realized one could tell a story using editing. D.W. Griffith thereafter experimented with cinema’s form and function, making great discoveries along the way. These short films gave cinema its syntax, and are significant to its development.

“Musketeers of Pig Alley” is hardly a rarity from this period, and is, in fact something of a staple in University film courses that explore the medium’s early history. Coming along as early as 1912, it is the blueprint for the later gangster sagas like Josef von Sternberg’s “The Docks of New York” (1928) and William Wellman “Public Enemy” (1931). It also establishes a few basic cinematographic features that helped the language of film develop further.

The plot deals with a young, struggling musician who leaves his wife and her ailing mother to play a gig in another city. He returns home with money from the gig, only to be jumped by a street gang and his money taken from him. He reports back to his wife, whose mother has now died, that he is going into the streets to find the gang that attacked him and get his money back. Meanwhile, his wife is taken to a dance by a friend of hers, and is given a drink that has been drugged. Seeing this from a distance, one of the gangsters stops her from drinking it, thus saving her life. Little does she realize that this is the same gangster who robbed her husband. This infiltrating with a rival’s attempt to drug the young lady results in a shootout. The gangster flees from police and seeks refuge in what turns out to be the apartment of the woman and her musician husband whom he robbed. When police arrive, the young couple gives an alibi for the gangster, in return for his having saved the woman’s life. He shows his appreciation as the film ends.

Elmer Booth, as the gangster, is the prototype of every movie bad man to come along in his wake. Moving slowly, confidently, and commanding his surroundings despite his short stature, Booth is the prototype for the type of character James Cagney would master some twenty years later. His reaction to the couple’s alibi, a winking nod and a hand clasp, is pure Cagney. We’ll never know how Booth might have developed as an actor. He was killed in a car accident only three years after this movie’s release. Lillian Gish is the other standout role, and of course she went on to have a long career that lasted until the end of the 1980s. Other performances by Walter Miller as the musician, and Harry Carey as the gangster’s tall, imposing henchman, add further impact. Miller would later star in many serials and B westerns into the sound era, until he collapsed from a heart attack on the set of a Gene Autry western in 1940 and died only days later. Carey, of course, would have a strong, enduring career into the sound era.

Director Griffith, with the ample assistance of cinematographer Billy Bitzer, uses tracking shots to show the rival gangsters following each other thought the busy tenement streets, each looking over their shoulder and trying to sneak up on the other. Menacing close-ups add an extra layer of intimidation.

So much of early cinema is filled with florid gestures that seem too broad and overly melodramatic. “Musketeers of Pig Alley” is filled with subtle nuance, making its narrative framework that much more timeless and effective. The importance of a film like this, on both a historical and aesthetic level, cannot be overstated.