User Reviews

Even though the Biograph catalogue of 1912 described the story as not particularly strong, this 17 minute film broke new ground in it's depiction of New York street toughs and cinematic techniques.

The Snapper Kid was a new type of gangster and the viewer entered his world with no moralizing, the visuals were not pictorial dreams harking back to a less complicated time but a world of immigrants, beggars, street kids and secretive, inscrutable faces. Elmer Booth was a stage actor but he bought "the kid" vividly to life and with a cigarette dangling from his lips, his hat at a raffish angle and a confidant swagger he burst into the Dicken's like world of the struggling young couple. "The Little Lady" (Lillian Gish) and her husband "the Musician" (Walter Miller) are straight out of "Little Dorrit" or "Bleak House". Griffith, who came to prominence with his airy, outdoor panoramas, now took his cameraman, Billy Bitzer, to New York's teeming East Side. When Gish walks along a crowded street, reality floods in, people look openly at the camera and the scene teems with life as a riot of types fill the screen.

There is a dance hall scene, but again no moralizing or lectures. The current fear of white slavery was raised as a man in a straw hat, later found to be a rival gang member, spikes the heroine's lemonade with suspicious powders!! But just what was the sweet innocent doing at a gangster's ball!! Her husband was robbed of his savings and had determinedly gone to track it down, in the interim the elderly mother had died so a girlfriend of the "little lady" encouraged her to go to the dance with her (you can also see those AB logos on the wall, it was all to do with making sure the films weren't stolen or copied). She is saved by the quick thinking kid, which then paves the way for a gangster shoot out on the mean streets of the New York slums. The titles refer to a mysterious Mr. Big, the showdown begins with the hoodlums inching themselves along the wall to a startling camera close up until the Snapper's face half fills the screen, his side kick (Harry Carey), who tries to ape the kid's mannerisms, just behind him. The screen is filled with smoke as bodies contort and fall. I had to keep reminding myself that this film is 102 years old!!!

The Snapper is on the run but the "little lady" remembering his kindness in the dance hall and with the title "one good turn deserves another" gives him an alibi when the smiling policeman calls. Elmer Booth is a revelation. I noticed that he died in 1915 - what a talent was lost!! The swaggering, cocky confidence he put into his characterization - don't tell me Cagney didn't see this movie when he was perfecting his Tom Powers. His gestures at the end plainly indicate to Lillian "You prefer the musician to me - I can't believe it"!!!

Probably the most daring scene is at the very end, a title comes on "Links in the Chain" and a hand passes money to the still smiling policeman. While "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" was being filmed, a gambler had been killed in what was obviously a hired hit by Charles Becker, a police lieutenant who had made his wealth by collecting graft from gambling, prostitution and protection - now the public was able to read about city corruption, the Five Points Gang and the Black Hand wars and skirmishes that were caused by infringements on each other's territories. The movie was definitely plucked from the headlines!!

"The Musketeers of Pig Alley" is an 18-minute black-and-white silent short movie written and directed by D.W. Griffith, a truly prolific filmmaker who is considered the best dramatic filmmaker of his era. Still I must say I did not enjoy this film as much as I hoped I would and I have seen better works from the director. The only aspect that convinced me here was the display of crime back in that era. The love story and everything else surrounding the main character was not too great in my opinion. Maybe my perception was hurt by the fact that I am not familiar with any of the actors in here except the stunning Lillian Gish. Anyway, all in all only a mediocre film, also for its time. Not recommended and the happy ending seems a bit forced as well.

Often credited as being the first gangster movie, The Musketeers of Pig Alley certainly is groundbreaking in that respect. It's about a poor young married couple who move into a cheap tenant, where they are constantly harassed by mobsters. When the husband loses his pocket watch, and a shootout occurs later, he seizes the opportunity to find it. And that's really about it. It's short, but it's exciting and it works pretty well as a film. You don't really get a whole lot of screen time from the gangsters themselves, because the story is told from the point of view of the poor residents, but I would say it's sufficient. The acting is good, and the story flows along pretty well. If you're into early films like I am, than I highly suggest you take a look at this one.

One of the most famous and interesting short films from this experimental stage of Griffith's works, before embarking on increasingly ambitious feature films and increasingly melodramatic storytelling.

The musketeers of Pig Alley stands out because in this case the story of street fights between rival gangs in the surroundings of a fascinatingly busy street is the direct antecedent of all the gangster cinema that will triumph 15 years later (with von Sternberg) and will reach our days (De Palma, Cassavettes).

Griffith seems to pay special attention to the geography where he develops his story: a street seen from the front (always the same shot) crowded with passers-by, children, young people alternating, old drunks. A portal opens to this street on the right, in which the main couple lives with the mother, another entrance door to a bar attached to this portal and connected with it from the inside, and a little further down, on the same sidewalk another dance venue. There is also across the street and to the left, an area of alleys, including Pig Alley, packed with revelers, drunks, criminals, and children. The characters move continually through these places, often making the same journey over and over again.

Despite the few shots used, and the fact that there are no camera movements following the characters, the movements of the characters remain clear almost at all times.

The film begins with a young married couple in their room, while their mother sleeps. We can hardly know if it is a marriage or brothers, since as in Griffith the behavior of couples is of a nauseating chastity, and the titles present them to us as the poor musician and the young lady. What seems clear is that the young man leaves his home to earn a living and one assumes that for a long period of time, as the young woman cries disconsolately at the separation. The young woman is Lillian Gish, who is really fascinating to look at: virginal-looking as ever, but less childish than in other Griffith works, and with her intense expressiveness and marvelous beauty.

Later, reads the title, the young woman leaves the house with a bulky package. It is not very clear how much later it is. The fact is that the girl leaves the house leaving her mother resting, and is harassed by the Snapper Kid (a brilliant and charismatic Elmer Booth). Next comes the most famous shot in the film. Lillian Gish comes out of her portal angrily thinking about how a gang leader has messed with her. She leaves the portal and walks straight down the street with somewhat abrupt movements. In the opposite direction we see the back of another young woman, without any role in the story, a simple extra that we will not see again. The crossing of the two young women is very fast, they do not even look directly at each other, they simply turn slightly with a disdainful or surprised gesture (the face of the other girl Dorothy Gish is only seen in profile): without function, without consequences, but this shot calls powerfully our attention. The power of cinema, of an image, can focus our attention on details outside the story, totally tangential, denoting a much broader world than that of the three or four characters in the plot.

Anyway, the mother alone at home dies. And we see Lillian Gish come home from selling the contents in the package, to find her dead.

The change to the next scene supposedly takes a long time, because in the next scene we see the musician return, with enough money, and find himself in Pig Alley with the group of criminals. The Snapper Kid watches the musician brag about his winnings with a friend. Elmer and his gang follow him down the main street and see him enter his portal. They enter the bar next door, and through the door that connects the bar with the reception of the house, they attack him and rob him in front of the door of his house.

In the next scene the musician leaves the house to get back his money and wanders through Pig Alley. A girlfriend comes to find Lillian at home and takes her to the dance hall, frequented by gangsters and where the young woman meets the two rival gangs. Surprisingly for a young girl from a film by Griffith, although she refuses to dance, she does not say no to a drink with one of the gangsters (Elmer's rival), in a room of the place that is not very frequented. Elmer follows them and there is a verbal confrontation between the two gangsters. Lillian leaves offended and angry with both (probably the drink that the rival was going to serve her was not exactly what she had asked for). The two gang leaders seem to decide a confrontation outside (it turns out that they both work for the same big boss).

First Elmer's gang and then the rival gang pass through the small bar next to the couple's house, with their pistols in their right jacket pocket, and from there to the now more deserted alleys of Pig Alley.

Now comes the main sequence of the film: the fight between the gangs, which Griffith shows in detail from the beginning, as each gang arrives to the alleys and prepare to face their enemies. Their comings and goings. Here it is true that Griffith seems to break geographical coherence with the montage and the entrances and exits of characters and these places become somewhat imprecise. There is a fun battle with the gangsters hiding behind barrels (we remember the much more dreamlike sequence of Fantomas the following year). The shot of Elmer Booth and his henchmen closing in on the camera while crawling slowly up a wall, into extreme close-up and in focus at all times, is a wonderful example of the use of depth of field and focus adjustment for expressive purposes.

In the middle of the fight, the musician appears and unexpectedly recovers his money. Then the police burst in. The movie ends with a fun exchange of favors.

It seems almost impossible that all this fits in a quarter of an hour of silent film. The characters have a personality of great relief thanks to interpreters of enormous charisma, especially Elmer Booth (whose career would unfortunately be cut short 3 years later in a traffic accident) and Lillian Gish; the montage is a marvel of rhythm, the locations are extraordinary for their life and authenticity. Griffith signs a masterpiece full of talent and innovation.

Altogether the best short of Griffith, which proves once again that his true and most lasting inspiration came from narrating contemporary events (the modern story of Intolerance), and not on Victorian nineteenth-century stories or extravagant biblical re-enactments.