cricket30 Review of The Miller's Daughter

The Miller's Daughter (1905)

Edison Company comes up with snappy new title . . .

[7/10 · 13 April 2013]

. . . for HAZEL KIRKE, a well-known play of Turn of the Century Times (on a par with DEATH OF A SALESMAN or GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS today). The folks that thought burning the shrieking beloved Coney Island headlining elephant Topsy alive would make great family entertainment decided that replacing a title well-known to their target audience with the chapter heading from an obscure collection of dirty stories written five or six centuries earlier made good business sense (which may give you a tiny clue as to why the Edison Motion Picture Company folded up its tent a few years after THE MILLER'S DAUGHTER was released to a mystified public). The makers of this 13 minute 7 second short (not counting the running time of the most important scenes, which the DVD talking heads claim were "lost," a statement some might not take at face value) at least anticipated the sort of thing that OSHA shortly would concern itself with, by casting a well-insulated actress to play the title role, which involves her would-be suicide plunge into a wintry river. As far as I can tell, no one is killed for real here (at least on-screen in the segments the DVD producers have chosen to share with us), unlike the case with THE LONE FISHERMAN, THE INTERRUPTED BATHERS, or ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT.