The Death Disc: A Story of the Cromwellian Period (1909) User Reviews

Coming Prepared to Work

[Single-Black-Male · 10 May 2004]

Apart from the novel experience of taking a film camera and crew to a location (be it west coast or east coast) and film actors that you work closely with (Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, etc), there is absolutely no preparation that goes into the short films that the 34 year old D.W. Griffith churns out on a weekly basis. For a start, the characters have no biography or history, which makes them one-dimensional and lacking in universal appeal. Secondly, Griffith is not working from a script but from some notes sketched on a piece of paper. How on earth can an actor prepare for a day's work when there is no script to guide him? The actors had no say on a Griffith set, and therefore the end result was this installment.

The staging is as sumptuous as the occasion requires

[deickemeyer · 27 January 2015]

A glamor of romance attaches to life in Cromwell's time which makes all stories of those days, and all pictures, too, for that matter, interesting. Perhaps the reality was more stern and uncompromising than the stories make them appear, but whether it was or not the intense interest aroused by the hero or other tales dealing with that age cannot he denied. The Biograph Company has selected a dramatic incident as the basis of this picture, and they have told the story well. Discovering three soldiers who adhere to Catholicism, Cromwell decides they must draw lots, the one receiving the death disc to die, while the others could go back to their comrades, he orders that the first child they meet shall draw the lot. It chances to be a child of one of the soldiers, and, child-like, she gives the prettiest disc, which means death, to her father. Rut Cromwell is so pleased with the little one that he gives her a signet ring and promises to grant any request made upon presentation of the ring. The mother invokes its aid to secure her husband's pardon. The costuming is historically correct, and the staging is as sumptuous as the occasion requires. The picture is replete with dramatic situations, and these are developed to the full in each instance. While the subject is one with rather complicated historic features, it holds the interest of an average audience and some applaud when the mother presents the ring and reminds Cromwell of his promise. Surely it offers at least a suggestion of a softer side to Cromwell's nature than history has yet accorded him, and in this way the film is beneficial. - The Moving Picture World, December 18, 1909