User Reviews

This movie is based on the Dion Boucicault play that, in turn, was based on the 1819 murder of Ellen Scanlan. Upper-class J.P. McGowan secretly marries poor Gene Gauntier. Some time later, his mother wants him to marry his rich cousin, Alice Hollister, who will raise the mortgage on the family home. McGowan waffles, while hunchback Sidney Olcott (who also directed) keeps offering to kill Miss Gauntier in return for his master's glove.

It's the third O'Kalem, one of the movies that Olcott did for Kalem with a company sent to Ireland. It's a very ambitious movie, being three reels in length, and the titles constantly note that a particular scene was filmed at the historical location.

On the down side, it's shot in the "Illustrated Title" mode, with the events being explained, then shown, and George Hollister's usually solid camerawork is marred by rather eccentric lighting. I suspect the issue was partially a desire to not disturb important tourist sites, and partly haste; Olcott was paid based on how much film he shot, and he probably pushed his staff to get the scene in the can as quickly as possible.

It looks like an important movie to me, even though its antiquated themes and authentic locales that look generic fail to impress. Certainly there are many similarities in techniques used when the company went to Palestine the next year to shoot FROM THE MANGER TO THE CROSS.

I saw this on the Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers set, but it (or perhaps a slightly longer, or more-slowly projected print) may also be streamed at the Irish Film Institute's website.

At three reels, "The Colleen Bawn" is an early longer film, with title cards that even divide it into five parts. Based on a play, which in turn was based on a true-crime novel, it's a primitive and melodramatic piece of transitional filmmaking. The play must've remained popular at the time, as apparently it was also adapted in an Australian film the same year. The main draw of this UK/US version from the Kalem studio is that it was shot on location in Ireland. Lest one forget that, the title cards constantly remind us that the scenes were photographed where the real-life murder melodrama unfolded, or somewhere like it, or supposedly exact recreations of the places. The result is more of a dry tourist brochure or museum tour than a movie.

These multi-reel longer films and features of the early 1910s are a chore to get through. The same tableau style, or "Illustrated Title" as fellow IMDb reviewer Bob Lipton puts it, of title cards (as opposed to intertitle dialogue) announcing proceeding shot-scenes, the stuffy period-piece costume melodrama, lack of interesting editing, camerawork or even mise-en-scene that may be tolerable in a one-reel short becomes exhausting the longer it goes on and on. At least, this adaptation wasn't nailed to the proscenium arc of a stage, nor feature the broadest of theatrical acting, as with some others of the time, e.g. "Queen Elizabeth" (1912). We do see some outdoor scenery and the depth of field and naturalism that provides. A couple shots are relatively well framed by foregrounded foliage or a cave. There's even a bit of continuity cutting for some of the action.

The actual murder melodrama is quite dull as depicted here, including the addition of a typically ridiculous Hollywood ending even before Hollywood was really a thing, and one may read about the case elsewhere, including in this heavily-titled film that is to be largely read instead of seen. Also of note is that it's included on the Pioneers set because star Gene Gauntier later claimed to be a co-director of it and other Kalem productions she starred in. The other director here was Sidney Olcott, who among making other films I'm not fond of, also oversaw the early feature-length passion play "From the Manger to the Cross" (1912), for which the main, non-biblical selling point was also that it was shot on location. If only they'd known how to take advantage of their globetrotting in visually appealing ways.