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10. Eloyce Patrick King Gist

Eloyce Patrick King Gist has the distinction of being the first black woman filmmaker. Like her contemporary Oscar Michaux, Gist produced films for the largely underserved Black community. However, she made movies for spiritual uplift rather than for entertainment.

Born in 1892 in Hitchcock, Texas, Gist met and married her husband James Gist, an evangelical Christian who produced silent films for local churches. Though a Baha’i by faith, she joined her husband’s endeavors by rewriting and re-editing his films Hell Bound Train (1929-1930) and Verdict Not Guilty (1930-1933). However, Gist may have also reshot some scenes in a second version of Hell Bound.

Unlike many of the race films that were shot during this period, their movies were unpolished (many scenes were shot out of focus), relied on nonprofessional actors, and used unconventional narrative structures. Regardless, Eloyce Patrick King Gist was one of the first black independent filmmakers during the silent era.

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9. Margery Wilson

Sara Barker Strayer, who changed her name to Margery Wilson so she wouldn’t ruin her family’s reputation, began acting in Cincinnati along with her sister, appearing in one-woman shows and touring in acting companies around the country. After auditioning for her sister with D.W. Griffith, she got a part in his 1916 movie Intolerance. She acted in three dozen roles while under contract with Griffith.

After joining the New York Motion Picture Corp., she wrote, directed, and produced films between 1920 and 1923, including The Offenders (1922-1923), That Something (1920), Two of a Kind (1922), and Insinuation (1922). Her movies, however, are lost. Only photo stills exist.

Questions about whether she actually directed these films continue to keep film scholars up at night. Though Wilson credits herself in her autobiography for producing and directing The Offenders, The American Film Institute credits Fenwicke L. Holmes as director. However, both modern and contemporaneous accounts agree that she performed most of the behind the camera production for Insinuation. Regardless, Wilson is still indisputably a woman pioneer in early silent filmmaking.

Nevertheless, a century removed from their first Hollywood appearance, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy continue to be celebrated both on-screen and off. Not only do audiences love their movies, they adore the men themselves. This all-encompassing fandom highlights the pair’s magic ingredient, one so rare in the performing arts: transparency. The two men allowed themselves to be known by all, inside and out, and their movies serve as an extension to this transparency, rather than a buffer between artist and audience. Laurel & Hardy’s exaggerated capers don’t lie, but rather blur the lines between cinema and real-life, indicating a genuine humanity behind the clowning. After all, Laurel & Hardy always played themselves.

Whatever occupation that writer Stan Laurel conjured up for the pair – whether down-and-outs, foreign legion soldiers, wealthy socialites, or students at Oxford – they rarely felt the need to alter their looks, mannerisms, or even their names. Their performances were true to life, capitalising on many facets of their real-life personalities.

Performer Jackie Gleason noted that Oliver Hardy “[…] was a delight to watch drinking, because he was just like his character. He’d wipe a drop off the glass, pick it up with his pinkie way out, sip it, put it down, tap it, very much like the character that he played”.

The pair never broke character, even when breaking the fourth wall, which often consisted of Ollie impatiently glaring at the camera as absurdity unfolded around him.

Such mannerisms, from which much of their humour was derived, were reinforced at every possible comedic opportunity. If Hardy could sternly push Laurel to one side in order to enter a building first, he would. If ever there was the opportunity for Laurel to remove his hat and ruffle his hair, whether out of confusion, satisfaction, or just plain boredom, that iconic bowler would be off in a flash. Their contrasting body types also played further into their characters, with Hardy always celebrating his weight by finding comedy in it, despite the many health problems he would later experience.

Outside of their films and stage-shows, the pair always dutifully played up to their roles, such as when they attended the birthday party of an obscure British Railway station. Footage shows Hardy snatching a comically oversized key from Laurel, before making an idiot out of himself by attempting to unlock a door which Laurel then opens with ease. It’s possible to hear the crowds roaring with laughter as the pair bring fiction into reality – or, more accurately, highlight how true to life their movies were.

Oliver Hardy portrayed himself as a pompous bully with a delicate ego. He knows less than what he thinks he does, and can be exceptionally lazy and decadent, even when dire circumstances demand otherwise. Stan Laurel was the humble underdog, clumsy and scatter-brained. Despite the two men being affable and intelligent behind the curtain, these less desirable aspects had more than a grain of truth to them. Hardy could indeed act entitled, clocking off at 5 to hobnob with stars like Bing Crosby, whilst Laurel was a humble workaholic with a thousand ideas.

This dynamic was complementary, but inevitably led to fall-outs. As depicted in the 2018 biopic Stan & Ollie, the pair’s behind-the-scenes arguments often trumped their on-screen squabbles. Such heavy topics as contracts, careers, relationships, and personal health, dominated many of their disagreements. These off-screen issues shine through in their movies; of all the double-acts that ever graced the silver screen, Laurel & Hardy truly knew how to argue.

Alongside their reputation for honest, no-frills comedy was another development which helped the pair to achieve success: talkies. Many of Laurel & Hardy’s silent contemporaries suffered during the shift to sound, a theme explored as recently as 2011 in the French comedy-drama The Artist. Charlie Chaplin, for example, had a voice that audiences did not feel suited his image. Although sound allowed him to expound on the morals of man, such as in his satire of Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940), for many Chaplin exuded more charm when mute.

Stan & Ollie, on the other hand, had their career skyrocket when sound film became popular in the late 1920s. The pair’s voices suited their characters perfectly; Stan’s croaky British twang highlighted his innocence, whilst Ollie’s Southern accent matched his bossy aggression down to a tee. In a way, the fact that the duo never pretended to be anyone else meant that any addition to their characters would seem fitting, provided it was honest.

Sound also allowed Oliver Hardy to show off his excellent singing voice, something which only his music-hall audiences would have so far appreciated. “Blue Ridge Mountains”, a duet with Stan in their iconic Western Way Out West (1937), reeks of class, one of those rare moments where two comics can do something with such sincerity that even the odd gag doesn’t detract from its effect. They sing a heartfelt song in beautiful harmony, and one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Few comedy acts can elicit such a response, but Laurel & Hardy’s films have many such instances.

What talkies really spotlighted was Laurel’s excellent writing ability. Verbal gags had occurred in their silent films in the form of title cards, but the spontaneity of sound added to their liveliness and frequency. The Live Ghost (1934) sees Laurel refusing to join a ship’s crew due to the ocean being “infatuated with sharks”. Hardy’s overconfident idiocy is summed up in his correcting of Laurel: “he means infuriated with sharks!”. Talkies paved the way for catchphrases, too, such as Hardy’s furious “Why don’t you do something to help me?!” and Laurel’s crumple-faced cry to the camera.

But whilst sound was elevating these on-screen arguments to a wittier and more bitter intensity, every new film added to the canon of an inexplicably close friendship. Of such bickering double-acts it’s often asked, “how are these two still friends?”, and Laurel & Hardy’s characters are no exception, remaining inseparable throughout their 107 films together despite their blatant differences and violent disagreements. Yet the seeds of believability are always being sown; the impromptu duets, the shared laughter at others’ expense, the unashamed bed-sharing in Laughing Gravy (1930) – these all betray, in the most warm and adorable way possible, a very real friendship.

This dichotomy feels believable because it’s real; much like the arguments, this heart-warming inseparability was merely a reflection of the two men’s reality. Just like their on-screen counterparts, the real Laurel & Hardy would remain best friends until the very end. Even after Hardy’s death in 1957, their legacy was so cemented for Laurel that he refused to perform again without his partner of 30 years.

The pair’s fondness for each other was more than evident when seen in the things they had to say about one another.

Stan said, of Ollie:

“Hardy inspires me. He is like the character he portrays because of certain individual traits. To me, he is refreshing, so darned human! His humour lies in the funny way he thinks. I can look at him and know just what he is thinking. His moods are very funny to me, the moods of a born comedian.”

And Ollie, of Stan:

“Laurel is the most unselfish man that ever lived and the funniest man in the world, as a comedian, as a writer and as a human being. He is so distinctive that he stands absolutely alone. He doesn’t depend upon funny clothes to make him funny, he is funny in himself. And I have sense enough to stand back and let him be funny.”

Laurel & Hardy didn’t reserve their love for one another. They were famously gracious to their followers, and infinitely grateful to those who continued to attend their live shows after their movie careers had begun to dwindle.

In his later years, Stan Laurel had his phone number listed in the LA directory, happily chatting to those die-hard fans brave enough to call. Funnily enough, his home number had been revealed decades previous in their hilarious short Blotto (1930), where Stan would recits to the telephone operator: “Oxford, oh, six, one, four!”.

Even the author feels the echoes of Stan & Ollie’s warmth in the form of a photo autographed for his mother, who was too ill to attend their 1954 performance at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Throughout the world there will be similar mementos of their loyalty, with many fond memories to accompany them.

In 1951 the pair released their last ever feature film, Atoll K. Poor reviews reflected a decline in their career, and many audiences were saddened at how old and ill the two gentlemen looked. They were both heavy smokers, and Oliver Hardy would suffer a heart attack three years on, and die three years after that from a series of strokes. His partner Stan would join him eight years later, at the age of 74. Stan’s funeral was attended by countless admirers including fellow star Buster Keaton, who stated, “Chaplin wasn’t the funniest. I wasn’t the funniest. Stan Laurel was the funniest.”

With their comedy, Laurel & Hardy tapped into something immortal. Their legacy will no doubt live on for as long as people will want to laugh. They emerged as cinema was taking over the world and set many precedents; it may mostly have been two men in ill-fitting suits fighting over incomplete tasks, but that only serves to highlight how childish true comedy is, and how primitive the act of enjoying it.

Still today, audiences can sense that the two men were enjoying themselves immensely. Once they’d met their lifetime comedy partners, Stan & Ollie insisted on having fun up until the very end. They didn’t look down on audiences; on the contrary, they allowed audiences to look down upon them, never taking themselves more seriously than was necessary. Laurel & Hardy made fools out of themselves for others and, despite their fame and wealth, didn’t lose sight of what was most important; beneath it all, being human.

Written by Louis B Scheuer

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The Kid (1921)
Director: Charlie Chaplin
Screenwriter: Charlie Chaplin
Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Edna Purviance, Carl Miller, Walter Lynch

Inequality, wealth disparity, gendered oppression and prejudice have long been among the thematic building blocks of great cinema, but rarely have they been presented with such innocence as in a Charlie Chaplin motion picture, and perhaps never have we seen all of them presented at once with such a cheekiness as in Chaplin’s seminal feature The Kid, released 100 years ago in 1921.

Charles Chaplin, then credited as Charlie Chaplin, was one of Hollywood’s great early filmmakers; a worldwide megastar known for his character The Tramp – a short moustachioed man with baggy clothes and clown-like shoes pointed in either direction of his body. Through slapstick humour, the films of Chaplin translated to audiences across the world, the timeless messages of love and equality easily recognisable no matter the culture – and in a decade that would come to be dominated by his pictures, the great writer, director, producer, composer and performer would start as he would mean to go on, 1921’s The Kid being one of the most influential and certainly one of the decade’s most timeless offerings.

Telling the tale of The Tramp – Chaplin’s iconic silver screen character who would be the focus of each of his pictures for 20 years – and a child he finds in the trash and chooses to take in after reading a note from its beleaguered mother buried in its clothing, The Kid visits so many of the great filmmaker’s most iconic themes and ideologies, ultimately pitting the down-on-their-luck unlikely duo against the oppressive forces of the police, the government and the always looming threat of malnutrition and disease caused by the duo’s complete absence of wealth; all the while cheekily breaking the fourth wall and causing many a smile through its slapstick antics.

The Kid opens with the title card “The woman – whose sin was motherhood”, and it is clear when viewing the piece with the knowledge that Chaplin was a child of the workhouse and his mother was placed in an “Insane Asylum” for raising him outside of marriage, that this opening title card was a targeted point made in opposition to the way governments and wider society ousted single mothers and their children into obscurity. Chaplin was a child born of oppression and poverty, and upon his arrival in the United States paid for his mother to be moved there with him to live in luxury for the rest of her life, and in The Kid it is clear this experience is central to the great filmmaker’s belief system and to the characters he creates. The woman in question, simply named The Woman and played by Edna Purviance, is alone and unable to feed her child when she comes across the car of a family of aristocrats and chooses to leave her baby there in the hopes of a better life for it. The car is then stolen by lowly criminals and the child put in the trash to be found by Chaplin’s Tramp, the narrative following the story of The Tramp and The Kid adjacent to that of The Woman, as The Woman is given a second chance at life, becoming famous and achieving all the things that the people of the time would never dare believe but Chaplin made integral to his story nonetheless.

The Kid’s politically motivated narrative is melted onto the structure of a superb stage comedy, the silent antics of Chaplin’s Tramp and Jackie Coogan’s The Kid rushing through frame, the characters playfully looking into the camera to evoke empathy or laughs when the time calls. Entire sequences are structured as jokes, with Chaplin placing us in the position of the all-seeing eye, awaiting the disaster that is coming to The Tramp unbeknownst to him. We laugh in anticipation of the silliness, and Chaplin strings it out for all it’s worth; then we laugh as the anticipated tension comes and is so gleefully performed, Chaplin never failing to seem as if he is enjoying himself. It makes for a joyous experience, and one that you can’t take your eyes off; what’s even more remarkable is how Chaplin isn’t done – he forces us to laugh again as he subverts expectations or offers a second laugh he’d set up earlier on but we’d probably forgotten about. It’s writing that can be described as nothing other than genius, and the performances are worthy of Chaplin’s great reputation as both an actor and director, every part played with a similar glint in the eye and physical gusto as the great man himself.

Yet, as with all great filmmakers, the narrative and the performances are just one factor to consider when judging a famous piece, Chaplin’s remarkable creativity behind the camera being somewhat revolutionary for the time. The film features a third act dream sequence that is bookended by soft fades in which Chaplin’s Tramp goes to heaven, goes shopping for wings, flies up and down the set, and is reunited with his son, only to be shaken awake on the doorstep of the house he’s no longer able to stay in. It’s a moment that evokes contemporary comparisons to the likes of Parasite and La La Land, each of which were inspired by films which were inspired by other films which were ultimately inspired by The Kid – and there’s no greater tribute to Chaplin’s work than this. Furthermore, late in the second act, The Woman looks directly into the camera to indicate to us that she is reminiscing on her time with her newborn baby – a distinct moment of juxtaposition to the cheeky smiles and looks of acknowledgement that have permeated Chaplin’s use of the technique to that point – while title cards and iris fades are regular occurrences that clue us in to the passing of time and the development of perspectives, illustrating Chaplin’s desire to further film language and make it as central to his storytelling as any other aspect. Chaplin was by no means the first to include such techniques in a feature film, but he was certainly an early purveyor, and was as talented as anyone at making them a part of his storytelling. During a time when the form was still brand new, Chaplin seemed to be from another world, his combination of the best of cinematic storytelling, narrative storytelling and performative storytelling being truly awe-inspiring.

In The Kid, humanity isn’t bad, but the constructs of society are – the absurd orphanage system and the people who uphold it without empathy or even humanity, the police who uphold the norms of an oppressive system through violence, toxic masculinity that pits those at the bottom against one another for scraps, the monetary disparity that causes thievery and starvation, the sexist agenda that sees women locked up for falling pregnant outside of wedlock yet has men continue as normal. It’s a stance Chaplin would take for the rest of his career – an ideological perspective that would have him chased from the United States for being a suspected communist – and so much of it remains so sadly relevant to our contemporary space. After a century of war, protests, technological advancements and political evolution, The Kid is just as necessary and just as important as it was at the beginning of the 20th century; an unmissable film not only to cinephiles and film aficionados, but a gently thought-stirring 53 minutes of cinema that is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.

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In this article I will lay out at least some of the main characteristics of Griffith’s films – especially those that made him a master of the Silent Era and one of the most prominent directors of the late century.

This is not intended as a complete analysis of Griffith’s works and life but rather as an overview.

First of all, it is vital to point out that Griffith embarked on a directing career by chance – he was actually planning to become a stage actor but after a few failed attempts, he decided to turn to acting on the silver screen. Around that time, between 1907 and 1910, the cinema industry was changing and new techniques were being introduced. In this context, Griffith found the perfect environment to forge a career in the movie industry.

From its conception, cinema was an attraction and a diversion for the working class from their everyday life and the strain of work, and it therefore didn’t need to have a particular meaning and structure, with the main purpose of a film being, essentially, to amaze the audience – a reason as to why it was not meant to follow a narrative at all.

In the time span mentioned above, the cinema earned its status as an industry, and it embraced new techniques to attract a different class of viewers: the bourgeoisie. Films were starting to acquire a new purpose besides the need to impress and amaze the public. Along with that, directors were trying to create stories with a narrator very similar to a novel that could immerse the audience in the events shown on screen and favour a sophisticated level of identification with the main characters. In this backdrop, Griffith played a significant role in popularising new techniques. For example, Griffith used cross-cutting to show two different actions that were happening in two different places at once. The use of cross-cutting, along with other techniques in his movies such as close-ups and fade-outs, were derived from the change in the production system which included the improvement of the movie theatres’ rooms in order to be more accessible for the middle class, the increase in ticket prices, the introduction of more moral and pedagogic themes, and the start of the star and studio system. As regards the latter, actors were subject to the impositions of the studio that required a certain public persona, interpreting certain stereotypical characters. As a result, movie actors became more and more popular, but they were also often typecast and therefore associated with only one significant role for the duration of their career.

As regards the actors in Griffith’s films, such as Broken Blossoms (1919) starring Lilian Gish and Richard Barthelmess, the filmmaker encouraged natural and convincing acting performances, an effect that was also emphasised by the use of medium close-ups and close-ups. These shots were already used by the English cinematic school of James Williamson and George Albert Smith, but not in a narrative way or in a feature-length film, since this type of film didn’t exist at that time – in fact, feature-length films were first introduced around the time of Griffith’s most prolific works, giving the director the chance to use and improve these new techniques.

Broken Blossoms is the story of a young Chinese man, Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess), who dreams of carrying the Buddha’s religious message to the Anglo-Saxons. In order to accomplish his quest, he travels to London and settles in the Chinese borough, but the dissolute life that the western people and his fellow Chinese immigrants live eventually change him, thus turning him to a life of vice – he becomes a smoker and a gambler. Vitally as regards Griffith’s creative choices, this change of heart is shown through the use of an iris that illustrates Cheng’s thinking as he leans against a brick wall. The sequence ends with the same shot – an iris – that neatly closes Cheng’s train of thought. In this sequence, Griffith also uses an establishing shot – showing us the setting of the story – and different field sized shots.

Examples of the use of an iris and cross cutting:

Griffith then shows us the story of Lucy (Lilian Gish), a young girl beaten by her father Burrows, who is introduced via the contrarian medium shot after using a long shot to establish the action inside his home.

Examples of long shots (establishing shots) and full shots:

Lucy is first introduced by a full body shot. Later we see Lucy in the distance with a long shot:

Griffith uses mostly close-ups and extreme close ups to show the characters’ inner feelings, and an example of this is evident when being invited to witness Lucy’s reaction to his father’s request that she smile at him. Although she’s not accustomed to doing it, she tries to hold up the corners of her mouth with her fingers in order to fake a smile. First, we see a medium size shot of Lucy and then a close-up once she smiles, an element of the filmmaking structure of Griffith’s work that in this case makes her fear towards her violent father quite clear.

The story reaches a turning point when poor Lucy first meets Cheng. In this sequence, Cheng observes Lucy while she’s looking at his dolls through his shop window. The emphasis the camera puts on the dolls is important as they’ll appear again in a pivotal scene in the film when Cheng brings Lucy to his shop – saving her from her father – and he dresses her as a Chinese doll, even giving her the few that she liked. As it is apparent from the screenshots, Cheng is fascinated by Lucy, and Griffith uses a subjective point of view to let us see Cheng’s feeling:

In the following sequence Cheng follows Lucy as she buys a flower and he secretly watches her, although she soon notices it.

Towards the end of the story, Lucy is in the back of Cheng’s shop dressed as a Chinese lady and we see her holding a doll in her arms, but her happiness is short-lived, since a spy – a friend of her father’s – tells Burrows where she is, therefore inciting his arrival at Cheng’s shop. Borrows’ close-up shows his rage and it is evident he’s willing to beat the poor girl.

The end of the film is entirely heartbreaking – the screenshots that show us the sad ending of Lucy’s life are part of a ring composition that Griffith masterfully creates – he lets us see Lucy smiling for the very last time, just like she had been trying to smile in the beginning.

After getting Lucy’s lifeless body to his home, a heartbroken Cheng kills himself, committing a final dramatic act. He remembers Lucy as a blossom, as he always associated her with the image of a delicate flower, and the last shot shows London, the city where the tragic story has taken place.

Broken Blossoms is a different film compared to Griffith’s previous epic efforts, such as the incredibly controversial but hugely influential The Birth of a Nation. In Broken Blossoms, Griffith tries to make amends for his previous racist films, each of which were questionable and condemnable from a moral and social point of view, but despite the controversy of the man behind the lens, he is still considered a master who popularised many of the cinematic techniques that are still used today. It’s safe to say that Griffith influenced the whole film industry, as not only was he a founding father of so many of cinema’s rules of visual language, but great directors were inspired by him too, not least Sergei Eisentein, Orson Welles, King Vidor, Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick and Jean Renoir.

Bibliography and further reading

Burch, Nöel. Life to Those Shadows. BFI, London, 1990.

Cherchi, Usai, Paolo. The Griffith Project. BFI, London, 1999-2007.