Rip Van Winkle

Washington Irving's story of Rip van Winkle, the old New York Dutch patroon who drank too much, lost his property, and slept for twenty years when he caught Henry Hudson and the dwarves playing ten-pins in the Catskills, only to return to his home an old, unrecognized man, is a familiar one. Less familiar is Joseph Jefferson, who played the role first in the mid-1850s, and then played no other role for the last forty years of his life. He was filmed in the role in 1896, and again in 1903. When he died, his son Thomas took over the role and played it in this early feature, with the combination of humor, pathos and a melodramatic ending that had been his father's revolutionary style of acting half a century earlier.

It's a pretty good adaptation of the play. It looks like it was shot in the actual Catskills, and Jefferson's daughter Daisy plays van Winkle's daughter as an adult. Of more interest to fans of old movies is that Gertrude Messinger is credited on-screen as the girl as a child. If it is she, she would have been only three at the time.

It's a bit old-fashioned in its techniques, like many a feature from 1914, but it's a fascinating relic.