D. W. Griffith | The House with Closed Shutters / 1910

the soldier who died as her brother

by Douglas Messerli

 

The Moving Picture World synopsis provides a much deeper explanation of the characters and their motives than D. W. Griffith’s 1910 silent film does, so I will use it to provide background information that is not evident on viewing the picture.

 

    The film ostensibly stars Charles Randolph (Henry B. Walthall), a young man of the South whose who father and other relatives were apparently killed in noble fights of the past. Like many a young southern boy, however, Charles is bombastic and haughty, and a heavy drinker to boot. But with the excitement of General Lee being bivouacked in a camp nearby, and with the fact that his two best friends, Wheeler (Charles West) and Carter (Joseph Graybill) have just become lieutenants and are about to go off to serve—each taking their turn to offer up affectionate goodbyes to Charles’s sister, Agnes (Dorothy West)—Charles is himself finally convinced to enlist, reappearing from another room suddenly in uniform.

     Both his mother (Grace Henderson) and, particularly Agnes, are overjoyed by his decision and proudly see the three friends off as they make their way, a bit like The Three Musketeers, to Lee’s headquarters, taking with them a full-sized Confederate flag which Agnes has just finished sewing and stitching together.

     Hardly do they have time to acclimate themselves to their new environment before Lee calls for a strong rider to take a message to the front, the three all volunteering, with the General choosing Randolph.

     Randolph sips on a whiskey flask he’s brought along, perhaps to fortify his courage, and rides off bravely. But almost the moment he hits the road, Yankee lookouts are on the chase, guns ablaze, and he turns and rides quickly in the other direction. They follow, and others along the way join in on the foray. At one point Randolph, now clearly terrified, stops off for a second for another sip from his flask, observing a nearby Rebel soldier falling dead, shot from the men at his heels.

     Randolph races off, arriving back to the family mansion, hardly able to stumble in before falling into a drunken stupor. Greeting him with great consternation, his mother and Agnes momentarily feel alarmed for him until they recognize his condition, and in trying to move and awaken him they discover the important message hidden within his uniform, realizing suddenly that he has not fulfilled his mission and certainly is in no condition to continue.

      With the impulse of a young ardent supporter of the cause, Agnes orders the servant to strip him and bring her his clothing. Almost like a minor St. Joan, she dresses as a soldier and rushes off to deliver the message, escaping Yankee soldiers by taking a shortcut off the road and hiding momentarily in the trees before she returns to the road, ultimately handing over her message to the waiting military unit, whose instructions apparently are to engage the enemy.

      She rushes back to Lee’s camp which is now involved in a full-out battle with the enemy, Griffith’s ability to make the scene appear real dramatizing both the adrenalin excitement of warfare and its horrors. Without a weapon, Agnes can do little but cheer on the musketeers, standing close behind them, and when they seem to rout the attackers, rushing forward with a flag in her hands.

      But almost immediately, those who have retreated are apparently reinforced by other Northern soldiers who come rushing forward to overwhelm the Southern defenses, killing Agnes among others in the process.

      When her mother receives word that her soldier “son,” has died after a series of brave actions, she is both bereaved and horrified that anyone might find her real son, a coward, still living and have to explain her daughter’s sacrifice of her own life for his.

       To keep out all others as well as to punish her son for his cowardice and drunken behavior, she orders all the shutters to be closed forever, as the house is sealed up in a manner that cannot help but remind one of an Edgar Allan Poe story.

       Eventually others begin to return from the war which the South has lost. They come bearing flowers for the loss of Charles, but also to resume their courtship with Agnes. What the mother tells them is never revealed, but she keeps them away at great expense. At one point Charles, attempting to unshutter his tomb and find out what is happening on the outside, is held back by his mother, who throws a blanket over her son to hide him and stands guard over the chair in which he sits, asking them to leave her in peace. When they obey, she commands the shutters closed again, and the ex-soldiers walk away confused and saddened.

       As the years pass, Charles ages, his mother becoming a now very old woman. From time to time the soldiers still approach the house with closed shutters, leaving memorial bouquets but not daring to knock. But at one point, when Charles’ old friend Wheeler can be heard on the porch, he commands that their old servant pull open the shutters, the sun pouring into the room so brightly that it clearly dazes Charles, causing him such consternation that he dies of what appears to be a heart attack. Their family’s dark secret has been kept.

      This early film demonstrates one of the most specific dramatic moments of a woman’s willing transformation into the male gender, even if it has nothing basically to do with sexuality; and this work, much like his later Judith of Bethulia explores, on a smaller scale, genuine transgender and perhaps even transsexual desires. If nothing else, Agnes outrides and displays a bravery not apparent in most of the other males.

     Yet there is been no mention of this film, to my knowledge, in any of the discussions of queer figures in film, not even on the extensive lists of films with possible LGBTQ+ subjects on the internet’s Letterboxd, despite the fact that his film is far more significant than the dozens of drag films touted as early indications of homosexual depictions in cinema.

     Finally, with its representation of an almost pathological fervor of regional patriotism and violence, Griffith’s film presents us with eerie characters who, having caused their own destruction closed themselves forever off in a world amazingly similar to Poe’s out of both shame for their inabilities to act and their shameful actions simultaneously. Griffith implies that the South has entombed itself in a pride based on enslavement. Perhaps Agnes’ vital and exciting sacrifice of her own life was the only alternative.

     The fact that the family’s all-too-loyal black servant was performed in blackface by the Irish actor W. J. Butler* speaks volumes that perhaps Griffith and his writer could not have comprehended.

 

*Butler’s grandson was David Butler, who directed two of the titles discussed in these volumes, Just Imagine (1930) and Calamity Jane (1953). The central character of the latter film bore a great deal in common with Agnes Randolph.

 

Los Angeles, November 16, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2022).