User Reviews

Acclaimed director D. W. Griffith took a turn in front of the camera for this reasonable little comedy which most would consider primitive and mundane by modern standards. He plays opposite his real-life wife, Linda Arvidsen, for Wallace McCutcheon, the director he would soon usurp as Biograph's number one director.

The story must have been old hat even in 1908. Griffith and Arvidsen play a married couple who take their leave of each other in the film's opening scene. It soon becomes apparent that, unknown to the other, both are planning to attend the same fancy dress party. At the party, they flirt with one another, initially unaware of the other's identity. Then wifey has second thoughts, while hubbie spots her without her mask and decides to test her fidelity…

The direction here is still fairly primitive - which might explain Griffith's swift ascendancy; the camera remains static throughout, but there is one innovation when McCutcheon makes use of a split-screen technique in which the set itself is actually split into two rather than any camera trickery taking place.

D.W. Griffith packs for a trip and leaves. When he is gone, his wife, Linda Arvidson, dresses as a nun for a costume ball. Meanwhile, Griffith meets some friends. He dresses as Pierrot, goes to the ball, and flirts with Miss Arvidson. Recognizing each other, each decides to trap the straying spouse in this Wallace McCutcheon comedy issued on June 30, 1908.

It's a bit strange, looking at this nine-shot film. It is the plot basis of Charley Chase's classic 1926 short MIGHTY LIKE A MOOSE. Griffith's first movie as a director would come out two weeks later. It's even harder to believe because this Griffith and Arvidson show no ability as actors and the camerawork by Billy Bitzer is perfunctory. The editing is workmanlike, but that's about the best that can be said about this movie.

About this time, his bosses at Biograph would broker peace with the Patents Trust, bringing them within the ranks and opening up enormous profits. Some of those moneys would be spent on making their product better. Griffith was a marginal stage actor who needed a steady paycheck, which is why he took the job. Even more, he wanted respectability. He wanted to show those snobs in his disregarded profession of the stage, who looked down on him because he had to work in the flickers, that he was a man of vision and talent and ability. Eventually, he would succeed so wildly that the entire industry would follow him, then learn how to do what he did, do it better, and leave him in the dust.

None of which is to imply that he was the only individual in the movies who contributed, who saw that the movies had the potential to be a great and popular art. Griffith took techniques from the stage, like cross-cutting. He took techniques from earlier film maker like George A. Smith. He forced American movies into feature-length movies after seeing the success of Italian epics, he picked the brains of his cameramen, his actors, his writers.

But for ten years, Griffith was the face and reality of what was driving American movies forward. This movie is where they were when he began his ascent to that all-too-brief height.

Husband and wife D.W. Griffith and Linda Arvidson separately dress up for a costume party. At the party, Mr. Griffith does not recognize the beguiling "nun" he meets is really Ms. Arvidson. The two dance, and flirt. Ms. Arvidson doesn't know whether to be furious or flattered. After the two separate, and change costumes, hilarity and mistaken identity ensue. The main comic point is that Arvidson has changed her costume with the couple's "colored" maid. Edward Dillon and Robert Harron are notable cast members, the latter in a typical messenger boy role. Most notable for the "split screen" costume changing scene. Directed not by Griffith, but by Wallace McCutcheon. Griffith and Arvidson were real life husband and wife; and, she is the standout performer "At the French Ball".

** At the French Ball (6/30/08) Wallace McCutcheon ~ D.W. Griffith, Linda Arvidson, Robert Harron

This Biograph short comedy is a pretty amusing treatment of a rather familiar idea. As in most of the better of these early features, it gets pretty much all that it could have out of the premise, and then it stops rather than dragging things out to an anticlimax. An economically filmed feature like this contrasts well with some of the more recent movies that try to squeeze 90-120 minutes worth of screen time out of 10 minutes worth of ideas.

The story starts with an old idea, as a husband and wife both attend the same costume party without recognizing each other. From there, it leads on to some generally humorous situations. Most of it is entertaining, and it is filmed economically without any dead time or pointless action. The actress playing the wife probably does the best with some of her expressions in response to the situation. The story-telling works well enough, and overall it's pretty good.

At the French Ball (1908)

*** (out of 4)

A husband (D.W. Griffith) and wife (Linda Arvidson) attend a costume party but neither know who the other is. At the party, the husband begins flirting with a woman not knowing it is wife. The two agree to meet later but the husband starts to feel guilty so he sends his friend to go meet the woman not knowing that the woman has also sent her friend, a black maid, to meet the man. The story here certainly isn't original even by 1908 standards but I found that a lot of the comedy still worked quite well. The final gags has the husband's friend flirting with a black woman, which comes off politically incorrect today but it still made me laugh. From the books I've read, several said that Griffith was a pretty good actor when on the stage and I thought his performance here was quite good. It should also be noted that the woman playing his wife here was Griffith's real life wife until 1936. It should also be noted that a lot of his financial troubles in life were due to her not granting him a divorce. Robert Harron is one of the extras.

D. W. Griffith did not "usurp" the position of McCutcheon; rather he inherited and profited from the fine work that McCutcheon had done. For the importance of McCutcheon see my review of Caught by Wireless. McCutcheon who was getting on in years and, presumably, not well (he was in fact still under fifty but was known to everyone as "the old man"). He was very largely responsible for creating the first director-unit system at Mutoscope (along with writer Frank Marion and cinematographer A. E. Weed and later Billy Bitzer). Now he simply retired in the hope that his son Wallace was succeed him. Unfortunately McCutcheon Jr. turned out to be incompetent which is what gave Griffith his chance. But he owed an enormous debt to McCutcheon Sr.

This print is played over-fast which gives the film much more of an old-fashioned look than it should really have. It is a simple gag but well told. Interesting to note that McCutcheon prefers the no fourth wall/split screen device to cross-cutting. It is in its way equally effective and would be popular during the next decade. Lois Weber's use of it in the 1913 film Suspense, for instance, is well known and much praised although it actually copies a use by Edwin Porter in the lost 1908 film Heard on the Phone. (both films are based on André de Lorde's 1901 play Au téléhone of which Griffith also made a version, Lonely Villa, in 1909 where. characteristically he used cross-cutting rather than a spit screen.). But there is more than one way to pluck a duck, as the French say.

More of an innovation, although to my mind a bit retrograde - back to the vaudeville "facial" - and irritating, are the close-up scenes in the course of what I assume is intended to be a cab-ride. Such scenes also enjoyed something of a vogue in the years that followed. A very similar scene, for instance, occurs in the Bunnyfinch Tangled Tangoists (1914)

LIttle is know about McCutcheon but he seems to have had a background in the theatre, which was one of his strengths as a director. Griffith, by contrast, was just a failed occasional actor. He is not too bad in this however.