Griffith's career at Biograph went in a kind of cycle. His earliest films tended to be big, outdoor action pieces, and he would eventually work his way back to making some very polished action films like Battle of Elderbrush Gulch and Judith of Bethulia. However, in the middle of this period, from 1911 to 1913 he mostly worked on a smaller canvas, focusing on acting performances and refining his use of indoor space. This charming little comedy is among his most understated and intimate shorts.
The story of The Sunbeam is played out in just five indoor sets. It's one of what I call Griffith's "dollhouse" pictures. The layout of a building is shown through the arrangement of the rooms as if we are watching the scenes take place in an open-fronted dollhouse. The careful ordering of the shots, plus the way each set is shown (e.g. door on the right in the left-hand apartment and vice versa) mean we instantly grasp the set-up.
Griffith did not do many out-and-out comedies, but his handling of the genre is remarkable. What we are perhaps seeing here is the birth of comedy direction. Comedy performances had been filmed since the beginning of cinema, and Georges Melies in particular had a wonderful comic imagination and sense of timing. In The Sunbeam however, the very way it is filmed adds to the comedy. The establishment of the different spaces allows gags like the door handles being tied together work. The best of the actors' comic performances are allowed to play out in single takes, while the more farcical moments are punctuated by the edits. Even the symmetry of the two apartments gives an extra note of silliness to the unlikely romance of their tenants.
So Griffith was perhaps the first to realise that directing a comedy was not just about filming a comedian. Certainly his style had an impact upon Charles Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch. The Sunbeam is a forerunner of silent comedies such as Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle and Rene Clair's Italian Straw Hat, both of which use the camera as part of the comedy. With its dark undertones typical, of course, of Griffith but not comedy in general The Sunbeam also demonstrates how comic relief can give tragedy a bittersweet edge.
The story of The Sunbeam is played out in just five indoor sets. It's one of what I call Griffith's "dollhouse" pictures. The layout of a building is shown through the arrangement of the rooms as if we are watching the scenes take place in an open-fronted dollhouse. The careful ordering of the shots, plus the way each set is shown (e.g. door on the right in the left-hand apartment and vice versa) mean we instantly grasp the set-up.
Griffith did not do many out-and-out comedies, but his handling of the genre is remarkable. What we are perhaps seeing here is the birth of comedy direction. Comedy performances had been filmed since the beginning of cinema, and Georges Melies in particular had a wonderful comic imagination and sense of timing. In The Sunbeam however, the very way it is filmed adds to the comedy. The establishment of the different spaces allows gags like the door handles being tied together work. The best of the actors' comic performances are allowed to play out in single takes, while the more farcical moments are punctuated by the edits. Even the symmetry of the two apartments gives an extra note of silliness to the unlikely romance of their tenants.
So Griffith was perhaps the first to realise that directing a comedy was not just about filming a comedian. Certainly his style had an impact upon Charles Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch. The Sunbeam is a forerunner of silent comedies such as Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle and Rene Clair's Italian Straw Hat, both of which use the camera as part of the comedy. With its dark undertones typical, of course, of Griffith but not comedy in general The Sunbeam also demonstrates how comic relief can give tragedy a bittersweet edge.