Cam Archer | Wild Tigers I Have Known / 2006

the sleepwalker

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cam Archer (screenwriter and director) Wild Tigers I Have Known / 2006

 

Wild Tigers I Have Known is a fairly interesting fantasy film about a gay middle-schooler Logan (Malcolm Stumpf) who has befriended an equally unpopular nerd, Joey (Max Paradise), only to quickly recognize that his friend is just that, a fairly self-conscious nerd, while his own loneliness and school abuse emanates, perhaps, from something even deeper. Soon in their friendship, even Joey grants that Logan is not just unpopular, but actually “weird.”

 

    Logan’s painful experience of that between-state just before the full-out abuse of gay recognition of the high-school years is certainly worth exploring, but the problem is that by 2006, the date of this rather experimental work, we all knew the unhappy results and director Cam Archer takes an enormous amount of time and fruitless psychic energy getting there.

     Like many a young boy (or girl) gradually perceiving that their queerness is not just eccentricity or a difference of values, but actually has something to do with a sexuality that has not even been fully thought out about much less experienced, Logan is vaguely attracted to the fairly popular 9th grader with the unlikely name of Rodeo (Patrick White), far too mature for his age and already engaged in a kind of studied ennui of  the world around him that will surely later make him popular with either the bored intellectuals of high school or the drop-outs which by that time he may have joined.

      The important thing that he is “cool” and beautiful in a way that even as he matures into gayhood, Logan will never become. Moreover, he’s not embarrassed, like almost everyone else, by hanging out with a younger dork who his girlfriend and most others already sense is “queer.” Besides, he too lives in a kind of fantasy world which, like Logan, he’s woven around himself in the utter boredom of his educational experiences. The fact that in the Santa Cruz neighborhood where their school is located, mountain lions have been spotted—which predictably school and local authorities have exaggerated into a major crisis worthy of even creating a school alert signal in case of a viewing of such a beast—also provides them with a kind of imaginary jungle which as a team up they can together explore. Neither boy, younger or older, seems fazed by possibly encountering such a beast and both concur that the “wild tigers” (the tiger being the name of their school sports mascot) they daily encounter are all more dangerous than a real mountain lion seeking out food or just someplace to sleep.

     Archer uses the metaphor, somewhat predictably, as representing the threatening outsider world which both Rodeo and particularly Logan signify for the others with whom they daily must make their peace. But Archer, stretching the metaphor rather beyond belief takes the younger boy into a kind of transsexual world as the boy attempts to find a way to take his friendship with the heterosexual teenager into the world of bodily sensual satisfaction. While it’s certainly possible that a young boy in such a situation might be curious about why a girl attracts someone like Rodeo instead a boy like himself, or even might imagine ways that he might replace the female attraction in his older friend’s life, it’s difficult to believe that, without any history of transsexual behavior, Logan suddenly takes on a persona of a female. As a girl named Leah, the 13-year-old nightly makes phone calls to his daily friend in a highly sensual female voice that would be difficult for even for the best of drag queens to imitate.

     But then, Archer’s film does not attempt to in any respect make claim to realism. For much of the film, Logan simply tunes out everything around him, dropping into a kind trance while the boys around him go through their gym swimming heats or the entire school gathers in a heated auditorium for a rally to support their mountain lion eradication efforts.

 

    For far too much of the film, Logan simply lies in bed contemplating the world he dreads or lays down in the fields and beaches to pretend to be dead—actions, which the director might have been warned by his elders tend to send audiences into their own trances or, if nothing else, distance them from any involvement in the film.

      Perhaps the most exciting moment of the movie is when, pretending to be Leah, Logan actually agrees to meet in a nearby cave to have sex with Rodeo. Turned away from Rodeo, the mysterious form asks Rodeo to take off all of his clothes before turning to reveal itself as his friend Logan. The meet-up, a shock to older boy, ends as vaguely as everything else in the film. At first it appears there is simple shock and rejection, but then, as Rodeo turns back to look there perhaps at least the possibility that something might happen. Later Archer teases us with another clip, reminding us of the event. Did something actually occur between the two after all? We never know since the scene itself becomes a kind of fantasy, although we have to credit Logan, if nothing else, for his bravery, which he reveals evidently again when he actually comes upon a mountain lion on the school ground, facing him down without hesitation, while behind him some “caring” authority shoots the animal dead.

      Presumably, in that act, Logan realizes himself that he is actually a similar beast, something that others would rather get rid of instead of accepting and sharing the world in which they live with them. And in that act, we presume, Logan accepts being gay without having to bend his reality in playing out a fantasy to fulfill someone else’s notions of proper sexual gender.

      Unfortunately, by this time Archer has so distanced us from his central character that we can’t fully discern what is going on in the young boy’s mind. All we can do, is worry for him as he moves forward into the even crueler world of the mid-to-late teens. As The New York Times critic Stephen Holden put it, “As you watch the movie, you pray that, in the language of Tea and Sympathy, the future teachers of Logan’s life lessons will ‘be kind.’”  But by this point in the movie we’re no longer certain who Logan actually is, particularly when the film closes as he walks away from us over the horizon, waving goodbye.

      Perhaps most of us half-sleep our way through those difficult years, but watching it in a motion picture is a bit like being seated before the screen about to embark on Andy Warhol’s more than 5-hour 1964 film, Sleep. Even as cute as John Giorno is, I promise you I’ll sneak out after the first 5 minutes. I stayed for all of Wild Tigers, but there were moments, I admit, when I was tempted to doze.

    

Los Angeles, November 21, 2023

Reprinted from My Gay Cinema blog (November 2023).

Juan Carlos Mora | A Salvo (To Safety) / 2016

shoot me, and i bleed

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juan Carlos Mora (screenwriter and director) A Salvo (To Safety) / 2016 [20 minutes]

 

Spanish director Juan Carlos Mora’s laconic film Safe takes place over a period of three years, represented by five mornings in bedrooms.

     The first is when Victor (Alejandro Valenciano) invites Hugo (Jose Ovejas) into his den of safety, his bedroom. The two are in clearly in love and looking forward to a relationship, despite the fact that they met up through Victor’s former boyfriend Miguel. Hugo has brought Victor a postcard which also is posted to the wall, but the fact that on the same hangs one of Miguel’s paintings becomes a sore point for Hugo.

      Although the short film never explains the reasons why Miguel continues to come between the two, the situation hints that perhaps they had already developed a relationship before Miguel intruded. Their coming together appears to be is a reheeling of old wounds, an attempt to remake a relationship that never fully blossomed between them or was perhaps torn apart by the other. But in this first scene there is real love and the evidence of a new beginning.

    In the next scene, Victor is evidently moving into Hugo’s larger bedroom, bringing all his possessions with him, and moving out of the zone of safety he talks about in the first scene. But with him has come Miguel’s painting, which again angers Hugo and brings up further resentments.

     Over the next couple of mornings in the bathroom and bedroom that we encounter the two, that resentment broods, particularly in Victor who has destroyed the painting after Hugo’s complaint, but clearly also no longer feels that he himself is fully “safe” in their relationship. The specter of his other relationship still comes between them.

     Soon after Victor leaves, symbolized by Hugo pulling away the old sheets and replacing them with new.

      Years pass. Hugo receives a call from Victor saying that he believes he is still in love with him, Hugo paying a visit to Victor’s new, smaller bedroom, clearly also a bastion of safety for Victor. Victor deludes himself, suggesting that it is as if time hadn’t existed. But Hugo suggests that he can find no real memories of their relationship in this room, the postcard being the only sign of their former relationship. In the interim, Hugo has graduated with his Masters’ degree and is looking for a job. Hugo is working for the same “agency,” the line of work remaining a mystery; but it is clear he has not substantially altered his life.

  

     Although he might love to start over again with Hugo, or even begin where they left off, it is evident that Hugo cannot return to the past. When Victor pulls out a cigarette, Hugo expresses surprise at his now smoking. And Victor must face the fact that there are been too many changes for both of them. As he admits, it appears too much time has passed.

       Upon the first meeting, Victor had quoted a passage from a book, “If you shoot me, I’ll bleed,” which he interprets as meaning that you have to except things as they are. Now Hugo quotes the line back to Victor, “If you are shot, you bleed.” Their relationship has long ago been over, perhaps before it even began.

 

Los Angeles, November 21, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2023).

Søren Green | En Aften (An Evening) / 2016

before or after

by Douglas Messerli

 

Søren Green and Tomas Lagermand Lundme (screenplay), Søren Green (director) En Aften (An Evening) / 2016 [9 minutes]

 

Obviously meant as a follow up to Søren Green’s 2014 film En eftermiddag (An Afternoon), En Aften (An Evening) is only a slightly longer work that takes us to the moments after the two boys of the original, Frederik (Jacob Ottensten) and Mathia (Ulrik Windfeldt-Schmidt), two years older, have consummated their relationship.

    We don’t know if this is their first time together—a direct result of that afternoon meeting when they attempted to sound out one another’s sexual interest—or the ending of one of many of such sexual sessions they have shared. All we do note is that Mathias seems to be troubled, the fact of which Frederik notes, but seems fairly unconcerned. Mathias was moodier even in the first short film, and now seems to be worried about the state of things even more than in the first work where he received the happy news via text from their mutual girlfriend Amalie (Julia Wentzel Olsen) that Frederik was very much interested in him.

      All we can glean is that Frederick seemingly knows how to lure his friend out of his funk, gently touching and stroking him, although at one point Mathias pulls back. And most important, all seems to be fine once he suggests they call for a pizza with all the toppings.

 

      There are two interruptions in their troubled after-sex moments, however, which matter very much in terms of their ongoing relationship, but which we can’t tell whether they are flashbacks or a slip for a few minutes into the future.

        The first appears with Frederick and Mathias sitting on a table which appears to be in the schoolyard, Frederick in the same shirt which he has put on in the earlier scene, waiting, so he tells Mathias for Amalie to stop by. Frederick seems disturbed by what he sees as her intrusion, suggesting that Frederick seems always be with her. A pizza is again ordered, and the boys charmingly spar a bit, as Frederick replies that Amalie’s not his “type,” Matias replying that he couldn’t get her even if he wanted. The two engage in a mock fight the way young boys who enjoy one another’s company often do, engaging in wrestling simply as a subconscious way of being able to put their hands upon the other.

         Amalie comes up to the screen without them knowing and watches for a moment.

         The scene then switches back to the brooding, after-sex scene, which makes the schoolyard clip seem all the more like a flashback, connected by Frederick’s call for pizza.

         There is another such intrusion, however, which picks up where the other left off, this time the boys discovering Amalie’s presence and Frederick going over to her to talk momentarily about her evening plans to attend a movie. He suggests a romantic film for her to see.

          Eventually Mathias comes over to the Frederick, he and Amalie greeting one another, with her responding, “You look cute.” Mathias asks what she means, Amalie replying, “You look cute together.”

          Mathias angrily reacts, “We aren’t cute,” storming off with Frederick following, wondering first what he’s doing and soon after, where is he going. Mathias turns back for a moment to answer: “I just can’t do this,” turning away and walking off with Frederick staring after in confusion.

       

    If this is a flashback, obviously, then the situation has, at least, been temporarily resolved, although Mathias’ behavior hints that he still having problems perhaps accepting himself as one of a “cute” gay couple. But if it is a continuation of his troubled, after-sex brooding, we can only imagine that the two may never be able to actually be a couple, that he is simply not ready for a relationship. The result may be similar, but the fact that they have been able to come together after recontextualizes the entire situation.

       There is no way of knowing. And perhaps their sexual encounter has only reified his lack of surety. But a great deal depends upon whether this is simply his reaction to what has happened to them or a pattern of behavior with which Frederick has learned to accommodate. I think that because the two intruding scenes are filmed in bright sunlight and the after-sex scene is titled “en Aften” that we must presume they have somewhat resolved their problems and may be moving into a new future.

       But they are young boys, after all, and, particularly in Mathias’ case, a full-out commitment to his sexual desires may still be something for which he is not yet ready.

       Interestingly, in the first film it was Mathias who was constantly texting Amalie, while in the second it is Frederick.

       Whatever, one must admit, they do make a cute “couple,” which someday they might recognize is not a put-down but an expression of their beautiful youth.

 

Los Angeles, June 9, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2022).

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).

Sidney Olcott | The Girl Spy: An Incident of the Civil War / 1909 || The Further Adventures of the Girl Spy / 1910 || The Bravest Girl in the South / 1910 || The Romance of the Girl Spy / 1910 || The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg / 1910 || To the Aid of Stonewall Jackson: An Exploit of the Spy Girl / 1911

rebel without a good cause

by Douglas Messerli

 

From 1909 to 1911, Kalem pictures featured a series of six short films, all directed by Sidney Olcott, written and starring Gene Gauntier about a girl spy, Nan, working for the Confederate cause during the Civil War.

     The films include The Girl Spy: An Incident of the Civil War (1909), The Further Adventures of the Girl Spy (1910), The Bravest Girl in the South (1910), The Love Romance of the Girl Spy (1910), The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg (1910), and To the Aid of Stonewall Jackson: An Exploit of the Girl Spy (1911).

      These shorts all feature Gauntier as a rough and tumble hero, willing to go through the most difficult of feats, and who at one point or another cross-dresses in order to achieve her goals. They were inspired by the real-life woman spy Belle Boyd. They were shot at Kalem studios near Jacksonville, Florida.

      The adventures are important, in part, because they were the precursors to the popular serial films in the 1910s starring Pearl White and Grace Cunard, which featured women able to take on their male counterparts; but also, in terms of LGBTQ+ history because they represented the first wave of US films featuring strong and daring women as cross-dressers, which included also The House of Closed Shutters (1910), The Red Girl and the Child (1910), Taming a Husband (1910), and Judith of Bethulia (1914), among others.

       Only three of these films remain available, the first held at the at the Library and Archives Canada, the second at The British Film Institute and The Library of Congress, and The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.

 

 

*

 

 

coded messages

 

Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) The Girl Spy: An Incident of the Civil War / 1909

 

In this film Nan is portrayed in the latter part of the Civil War when the Union Army had pushed their operations deep into the South. In an early scene we see the Union soldiers arrive at her house, ransacking the place for food and stealing her hen, with Nan, dressed as a Southern Belle, trying to fight them off and angered by the event.

 

   Secretly, however, the motherless girl, dedicated to the Southern cause, along with her boyfriend have been ordered to tap the telegraph wires and listen in to the code of the Union Army messages, reporting them back to headquarters. The first two minutes of this film, when Nan receives her orders has been lost, and the film picks up with the scene I describe above with the arrival of the Union Soldiers on a raiding mission.

      Immediately after, we observe her boyfriend shinnying up a local telephone pole, where he cuts both wires and hooks them up to his own listening device. He listens in as we seen the Union soldiers receive an important message which their specialist telegraphs, as he jots down the messages from the Morse Code.

 

    Suddenly observing a small group of Union soldiers in the near distances, he runs off, returns home and hands the message to Nan, to hide himself jumping into an empty water barrel situated next to the house.

     The Union soldiers have followed him home and, as they begin to search the house, Nan, now dressed as a man, sneaks around from the other side of the house and rides off on one of their horses. They ride after her, leaving only the one horseless soldier behind. As he shoots at the escaping Nan, the hidden boyfriend rises from the barrel, clonks the soldier over the head, and strips him, putting on his Union uniform.

      Nan, meanwhile, attempts to outrun the pursuing four soldiers, fording a small stream, and, in what the intertitles suggest is “a clever use,” jumps off her horse and behind a tree pulls off her male garb to transform herself back into a woman who points out the direction to the passing soldiers in which she claims to have seen the Confederate ride. 

       Eventually, they come across their stolen horse, realizing that they have been tricked.

      At Edward’s Road House, in the meantime, the now drunken group of drunken Union soldiers sit drinking. Nan arrives on the run, and seeing the soldiers has no choice but, in her womanly garb, to sit down to a table and order up something, served predictably perhaps but also somewhat ironically by a black man given the Union attempt to “free” the slaves. The Union men, presented in this Southern version of reality as monsters, all begin to manhandle her.

 

     At nearly the same moment, her boyfriend, dressed in Union regalia arrives and orders the men to leave her alone. As they move inside, he quickly hands Nan a gun, and at that very moment the man whose horse she has stolen suddenly arrives, recognizing her. She has no choice but to shoot him dead, telling the other soldiers who rush out of the road house that a stranger has just shot him and ridden off.

     Nan and her Confederate soldier run off again, the four Union soldiers behind them. Nan’s boyfriend turns, attempting to shoot them, but is himself shot instead. Terribly wounded, he hides Nan in a large bunch of rushes as, pulling off his fake beard and moustache, he pretends to be another Union soldier pointing out the way of the escapees to his pursuers.

     In front of her, he pulls open his shirt, revealing his wounds, falls down, and dies, Nan rushing to his side, briefly hugging him to her before continuing on her own escape.

      In the last frame, she finally reaches her Confederate base, handing over the secret messages where she is lauded for her brave feats.

 

Los Angeles, July 3, 2023

 

 

 

 

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through an open window

 

Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) The Further Adventures of the Girl Spy / 1910

 

While Nan is visiting with several of her female friends, a peddler arrives pretending to sell his wares, but sneaking a secret message to her: she is wanted at Confederate headquarters.

     She quickly rides there and receives her orders. Infiltrating a known Union meeting place, Miller’s Tavern, she observes three men meeting in a back room and, from the outside, carefully lifts up the window a bit to listen in to their conversation.

 

     However, one of the soldiers observes that the room has become far windier and perceives that the window has been risen. He goes to check out the situation and there finds Nan scribbling down their discussions concerning their secret plans.

      Hearing his arrival, she pulls out a gun and shoots, the two remaining within quickly moving to the window and themselves shooting, only to finish off their fellow soldier as Nan runs off. Once more a foot pursuit follows, with the two armed men close behind her. She returns home, lifts up of the bucket and drops herself in the well, the two men arriving puzzled by her sudden disappearance.

       But the woman of the house, either mother (which the documentation has told she doesn’t have), an aunt, or servant, brought out by the soldiers immediately calls for the help of an older man once the soldiers have left; realizing where Nan might have disappeared to, they gradually wheel up the heavy bucket upon which she is still standing, finding her soaking wet.

      Nan, now dressed as a boy, is put into a gunny sack by the older man and placed on his wagon with several sacks of apples, evidently meant as provisions for the Union Army. He drives through enemy lines, one of his bags inspected, and when safely into enemy territory opens up the bag from which the boy Nan emerges.

       The boy climbs high into a tree beneath which two Union men come to rest or evidently picnic. But as soon as they have sat down and opened their sack of food, she jumps from the tree onto one of the horses and rides off.

       She speeds off the Confederate camp and proudly delivers up the Union secrets.

       This second work in the series is not nearly as interesting or unpredictable as the first, and the fact that her scenarios were pretty much made up as the filmmakers went along becomes fairly apparent.

        By the time of the fifth extant film the series had grown much more sophisticated.

 

Los Angeles, July 3, 2023

     

       

 

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riding the rails

 

Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) The Bravest Girl in the South / 1910 || lost film or unavailable

 

There is no evidence that this film is still available and it is likely a lost movie. But a synopsis does appear on the IMDb site, attributed to Bruce R. Bardarik, without providing any information of who he is or how he came to see this movie. It reads:

 

“Worn out and wounded, a Confederate messenger crawls up to the house of Nan, and gives her a dispatch for delivery to another agent fifty miles distant. Ostensibly bound for market, she rides through the Federal camp, but is suspected and hotly pursued. By taking shelter in a log shanty, she temporarily evades the soldiers, but they get on her track again, and another thrilling chase ensues. Reaching the railway, Nan invokes the aid of a friendly engine driver, and has the satisfaction of outdistancing her pursuers and delivering the all-important document.”

 

Los Angeles, July 3, 2023

 

 

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in bed with the enemy

 

Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) The Love Romance of the Girl Spy / 1910 || lost film or unavailable

 

Evidently this fourth of the girl spy series was to have been the last of the series. It would seem a good ending, since the Confederate spy, oddly enough, falls in love in this picture with a Union soldier, Captain Wilkins, who after the War claims his Rebel sweetheart.

      Accordingly, we also do not know if this film, about falling in heterosexual love, has any LGBTQ content. I can find no pictures of the movie. But we do still have “The Moving Picture World” synopsis, which reads as follow:

 

“This is the fourth and last of the Kalem Company's celebrated series of productions relating the fascinating adventures of Nan, the Girl Spy. In this is shown how Fate played a trick on Nan; how she found the man to whom she entrusted herself and her future happiness in the army of the enemy she hated so bitterly.”

Scene I. The End of the Battle - Nan Meets the Wounded Union Officer.

Scene II. One Mouth Later - Love's First Awakening.

Scene III. Captain Wilkins Bids Nan Farewell.

Scene IV. The Girl Spy Is Captured.

Scene V. The Escape.

Scene VI. Nan Tells General Lee of Her Failure.

Scene VII. After the War Captain Wilkins Claims His Rebel Sweetheart.

 

     It would have been wonderful, if nothing else, to know how Gauntier and Olcott brought the two warring sides together and justified the girl spy’s Confederate betrayal, her support of slavery, and her previous murder of so many Union soldiers.

 

Los Angeles, July 3, 2023

 

 

 

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deeper waters

 

Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) The Girl Spy Before Vicksburg / 1910

 

In this 5th installation of the girl spy series, gay actor and director Robert Vignola plays the role of the Confederate General, with Australian actor and director J. D. McGowan as his handsome assistant. The only copy of the film that remains is held at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam which explains its Dutch intertitles, translated in the version I saw into English.

 

     This spy story is quite simple. A Union powder wagon is making its way across the country guarded by mounted Union soldiers. Without men he might detach to destroy the wagon, the Confederate General is forced to call upon his own daughter, Anna (Gauntier, her character called Nan in other sources and the credits) who, dressed in a Union military uniform, rides to the Union unit with a fake declaration, telling the group to move in another direction. They believe not only in the paperwork but that its messenger is one of their own and a male. Evidently, they are quite easily duped.

     As they prepare to turn about, Anna knocks out the young guard who is attending the wagon and takes his place. As they begin to move forward, she plants a dynamite cartridge under the wagon, lights the fuse, and hurries away from the danger.

 

    The wagon explodes into what the publicity sheet described as “a heap of charred embers.” As Anna rushes off, she is followed closely by Union soldiers, escaping as she leaves her horse and dives into a river, pretending to swim off. The soldiers follow her, swimming out of the frame. Meanwhile the camera holds still, focusing on the rather still lovely scene of the river without seemingly a soul in site—until suddenly Anna rises from the deep waters, having escaped her pursuers by remaining there for a rather long period of time.

 

 

      She returns home to find her mother, frantic at her absence, kneeling in prayer.

      The scenes with the Union military, the ammunition explosion, and particularly the river scene are all quite wonderfully filmed by cinematographer George K. Hollister.

      Too bad the film, like Griffith’s before it, celebrates heroism for a cause that was determined to keep blacks in slavery. It is notable that in this film, the original driver of the ammunition wagon is a black man, not a white in blackface.

 

Los Angeles, June 13, 2023

 

     

*

 

 

marching to the rear

 

Gene Gautier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) To the Aid of Stonewall Jackson: An Exploit of the Spy Girl / 1911 || lost film or unavailable

 

The final episode of the spy girl series may have been closer to a feature film, although again we cannot know whether or not it as any LGBTQ content. This time we do have a photograph from the production and a longer “Moving Picture World” synopsis.

“Monday, while the girl spy is visiting relatives, General Shields, of the Union army, and his staff, take possession of the house for the night. Nan, seeing an opportunity to employ her professional talents, makes an effort to learn the Union officer's plans. She finds the General's room guarded, but discovers another way to overhear the conversation. Retiring to her room on the second floor, she crawls out of the window on to the roof of the gallery, lowers herself down to the ground and takes up a position at the window of the General's room. Hearing the officer say he would attack Jackson at daybreak, Nan thinks of the doughty General and his Confederate army one hundred miles away. Starting on her journey, Nan rides at top speed with her important information. Tuesday night, Nan has twenty miles more to go and her horse is fagged out. This forces her to rest at a nearby town, where she unwittingly runs into danger and is suspected of being the girl spy. The loyal keeper of the tavern warns Nan of the suspicion aroused against her and an hour later Nan escapes from her room, goes to the barn for her horse, which she mounts and rides off. As she passes the tavern door the Union soldiers, hearing the sound of her horse, all rush out and readily recognize the spy is trying to escape. They quickly mount their horses and follow in pursuit. Nan, however, being thoroughly familiar with the country, fools them. Finally reaching the Confederate lines, she asks that she be taken to General Jackson, whom she informs that Shields will march at sunrise Wednesday morning and before noon will attack Jackson's flank. The doughty General of the Confederates replies, "We will march immediately and surprise General Shield's rear."

 

Los Angeles, July 3, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).