Review of The New York Hat

"The New York Hat" is an American 16-minute black-and-white silent short film from 1912 and one of the more known efforts by D.W. Griffith who is considered perhaps the number 1 filmmaker worldwide from his era when it comes to drama movies. As Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Arbuckle and others were thriving in the comedy genre, Griffith made an uncountable amount of dramatic short films on sometimes inconvenient subjects like the role of women or the role priests as in this one here. Still sadly I must say despite the inclusion of actors like Pickford, Barrymore and Gish, this film never lives up to its premise. Maybe technical filmmaking aspects weren't on the level yet where they could match Griffith's vision and turn into something wonderful or maybe it's the moments of overacting or maybe it's the lack of sufficient intertitles quantity-wise or maybe a bit of all that and some other aspects that eventually resulted in me finding this one forgettable, but it's somewhere in-between there I guess. The consequence unfortunately was that story and characters in this tale never made as much of an impact on me as I hoped they could. Still there are good moments and it is definitely not a failure, but it's also a bit of a missed opportunity. I am sure the plot was far better than they eventually had the means to show us. But we need to rate what we were given and not what could have been, so this one gets a thumbs-down from me. Not recommended.