It may come from the end of 1911, but The Miser's Heart marks the beginning of the run of really outstanding shorts Griffith made at Biograph during 1912. His handling of suspense and human elements had been steadily developing over the years, and here he brings them together in a picture that is at times nearly perfect.
Griffith takes special care to set up his characters, giving them well-defined introductory scenes. This is an important development, and something that is missing from Griffith's earlier action films. The fact that we are given time to get to know these individuals makes us care when they are in danger. Although it's the melting of the eponymous miser's heart that is the main focus, it's Lionel Barrymore who gives the best performance as Jules the Thief, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Charlie Chaplin's screen persona. A mischievous yet kind-hearted petty-thief who saves the day yet eventually goes unrewarded, Jules may or may not have been a direct influence on Chaplin, but he certainly has a similar, poignant, impact.
By now, Griffith was honing his ride-to-the-rescue climaxes down to a fine art. Here, he juggles the various elements to heighten tension complicating Jules' rescue efforts by his getting arrested, and using the burning rope to visually establish a time limit. Rather than simply flicking back and forth between two locations, Griffith edits between different spaces going from the close-up of the flame to the long shot of the girl suspended over the street. Each of these shots is a single "fact" the cinematic equivalent of a sentence. The one failing of this sequence is that it is a little short, so the sense of danger never quite builds.
There is a real outpouring of warmth and humanity in this picture, and this extends to the composition of the shots. If you get the chance pause the film in the penultimate scene, when the little girl, the mother and the miser all reach towards each other at 15:33 on the version I have seen, although it may vary at other playing speeds it's one of the most perfect tableaux in all Griffith's work.
Griffith takes special care to set up his characters, giving them well-defined introductory scenes. This is an important development, and something that is missing from Griffith's earlier action films. The fact that we are given time to get to know these individuals makes us care when they are in danger. Although it's the melting of the eponymous miser's heart that is the main focus, it's Lionel Barrymore who gives the best performance as Jules the Thief, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Charlie Chaplin's screen persona. A mischievous yet kind-hearted petty-thief who saves the day yet eventually goes unrewarded, Jules may or may not have been a direct influence on Chaplin, but he certainly has a similar, poignant, impact.
By now, Griffith was honing his ride-to-the-rescue climaxes down to a fine art. Here, he juggles the various elements to heighten tension complicating Jules' rescue efforts by his getting arrested, and using the burning rope to visually establish a time limit. Rather than simply flicking back and forth between two locations, Griffith edits between different spaces going from the close-up of the flame to the long shot of the girl suspended over the street. Each of these shots is a single "fact" the cinematic equivalent of a sentence. The one failing of this sequence is that it is a little short, so the sense of danger never quite builds.
There is a real outpouring of warmth and humanity in this picture, and this extends to the composition of the shots. If you get the chance pause the film in the penultimate scene, when the little girl, the mother and the miser all reach towards each other at 15:33 on the version I have seen, although it may vary at other playing speeds it's one of the most perfect tableaux in all Griffith's work.