Sunday, September 22, 2024

“Winning Independence” with General Washington

Here’s yet another video that’s interesting as a representation of the Revolution for modern Americans.

The modern Americans of 1932, that is.

That year, the U.S. of A. celebrated the 200th anniversary of George Washington’s birth, a division of Kodak called Eastman Classroom produced four fifteen-minute movies about him with the blanket title George Washington: His Life and Times.

The screenshots in this posting are from the installment “Winning Independence,” as put on YouTube by Periscope Films.
Though talking pictures had become standard entertainment by that time, schools still weren’t wired for sound, so these films were made as silent movies, with an emphasis on visuals.

Judging by the number of men shown, the battlefield scenes must have had high budgets. The image above shows grenadiers marching up Bunker Hill, looking very much like Howard Pyle’s painting of that scene. There are also animated maps.

The narrative is standard: Washington provides discipline for the army, loses New York, wins at Trenton and Princeton, loses Philadelphia the next year, learns enough at Valley Forge to win at Monmouth, and then there’s a jump over several years with just a quick mention of Charleston and Gen. Nathanael Greene before we arrive at Yorktown.
The credits thank William Randolph Hearst for the impressive scenes of Washington and his troops crossing the Delaware River on the night of 25–26 Dec 1776. Some of those shots match the 1924 feature Janice Meredith, starring Hearst’s inamorata Marion Davies.

The other movies in the series are “Conquering the Wilderness,” “United the Colonies,” and “Building the Nation.” 

4 comments:

  1. A silent film version of Paul Revere's Ride was produced by the studios of Thomas A. Edison, circa 1914. The film still exists: I saw it playing some years ago as part of a museum exhibit, and I thought it was pretty comical, myself. But I haven't been able to track down a copy of it online. It has to be in the public domain by now.

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  2. That footage may appear in this modern debunking video. That movie proclaimed that it had been shot in actual historic location, and indeed there are some familiar locations visible. Plus familiar faces among the talking heads.

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  3. Film databases say Edison’s director Edwin S. Porter made a version of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” in 1907. Charles Brabin directed another version in 1914, and there are some screen shots on IMDB. D. W. Griffith included the story in his 1924 feature America, and that still exists.

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  4. The video you link to, John, does include part of the film that I saw in the museum. They had the complete film, beginning to end, with the caption cards, so it still exists somewhere. Surprising that the whole thing isn't online somewhere...

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