The Virginian

Virginian, The (1914)

** (out of 4)

Dustin Farnum plays a cowboy from Virginia who goes out West with his best friend but a woman (Winifred Kingston) comes between them. To make things even worst, the best friend gets caught up with some castle thieves at the same time the Virginian is hired to bring the gang down. This was DeMille's second feature coming after the same year's The Squaw Man, which he would go onto remake twice. This is certainly a step down from his previous film but there's still some mild entertainment to be had here. The young DeMille hadn't came down with any of his trademark style at this point in his career but he does a good job handling the story and keeping it moving. The film runs a short 53-minutes and that time goes by real fast without any down time. The cast is pretty good and that includes leading man Farnum who was also in the director's first film. There really isn't too much action until the end but there's still some fine humor to keep the film moving.

This was Cecil B. DeMille's first picture as sole credited director. Like the better known yet inferior Squaw Man, which he co-directed with Oscar Apfel, it is a western starring Dustin Farnum. Unlike its predecessor, The Virginian bears the hallmarks of having been made by a classy albeit inexperienced director, and the definite DeMille style is beginning to emerge.

Part of The Virginian's superiority over The Squaw Man is its tighter storyline. This is probably helped by the fact that it unswervingly follows genre convention. The western may have been in its infancy, but even in 1914 the iconic cowboy and his inevitable shootout with the villainous outlaw were already synonymous with it. One factor which characterises this as an early western is the theme of an outsider coming to the west – in this case the love interest Molly. At this time the west was not yet old, and it was an exotic place for easterners to discover. There's already something of a shift going on here though as the hero himself is an established westerner. I have to say, Dustin Farnum looks a lot more comfortable here playing the genuine cowboy as oppose to the English gentlemen traveller of The Squaw Man.

Right from the start, Cecil DeMille differed somewhat in approach from DW Griffith in that he was most concerned with what went on in individual shots rather than the relationship between them, favouring long takes and rich compositions. He shows some promise here, making good aesthetic use of depth and balance, although he's not quite there yet when it comes to clarifying action and character. For example, he introduces the villain Trampas with a title card, then confuses us by showing three men sitting round the table. Our eyes will probably be drawn to the man on the left with the large sombrero, but it's only thirty seconds or so into the scene that we realise it's the man on the right who is Trampas.

Some more typical – and innovative – DeMille touches emerge later. DeMille was one of the first filmmakers to convey psychology through technique. For example, when Farnum and his pal Steve are fondly remembering their adventures together, he literally shows their memories on screen in a superimposed image. Of course, this technology had been around since Melies' heyday fifteen years earlier, but DeMille is using it to photograph thought. You don't see anything like that in the work of Melies, or Griffith for that matter.

By and large however, De Mille is still taking his lead from Griffith, which is fair enough as Griffith was the undisputed master at the time. His staging and use of close-ups looks very much like that in the Biograph shorts. There's also some Griffith-style parallel editing to contrast the diverging paths of Steve and Farnum, when the former falls in with the cattle rustlers and the latter falls in with the school ma'am. The later DeMille tended to keep individual scenes intact. However, it would not be long before fully-fledged DeMillean classics such as The Cheat would appear.

Interesting silent from the very early days of Universal, based on a popular Owen Wister novel and perhaps partly scripted by him. What impressed me the most about it was the command that director Cecil B. DeMille has over feature editing at this early stage. His handling of the principal actors is not particularly outstanding; and DeMille would not further distinguish himself in this area as his long career unfolded. But DeMille understands how to intercut separate scenes so they fold into one another and move the story forward. Also DeMille shows skill in coordinating crowd scenes, which would certainly serve him well in his later biblical epics. In these respects "The Virginian" is one of the most advanced features of it's time, at least of the ones from 1914 which we can still see today.

Dustin Farnum is "The Virginian", a cow-puncher who arrives to settle in Bear Creek, Wyoming; where, he meets, and falls in "lov" (sic) with newly arrived schoolteacher Winifred Kingston (as Molly Wood). His life is complicated when his best friend Jack W. Johnston (as Steve) gets involved with town gangster William 'Billy' Elmer (as Trampas).

The part, early on, with Mr. Farnum and Hosea Steelman (as Lin McLean) exchanging guests' babies while they dance and drink whiskey, is amusing. There are some interestingly set-up outdoor shots from director Cecil B. DeMille. The story is sometimes odd; for example, Mr. Johnston takes up with Mr. Elmer, it's stated, as Farnum "neglects" him to be with Ms. Kingston. Later, Johnston writes something on a newspaper - "good by (unreadable) i couldn't speak to you without (unreadable) the baby Steve". I watched it with my finger on still, and still couldn't figure it out. Among the featured players. Johnston delivered the best performance. Farnum and Kingston, who had just co-starred in "The Squaw Man" (1914), would later marry.

***** The Virginian (9/7/14) Cecil B. DeMille ~ Dustin Farnum, Winifred Kingston, Jack W. Johnston

so I watched this with a couple of friends and I don't know if Demille did it on purpose, but it has got a high value of comical performances. actors are portraying this silent as if they were the main characters in a Shakespeare play. sometimes they overact so much it becomes silly and even stupid. that's why my friends and I enjoyed it so much. they were telling each other what the persons in the movie must have been thinking. things as 'get that gun out of my ass' and 'don't you touch my horse' came spontaneously out of our minds, which made the old movie funnier to look at. it was generally stupid. I broke a finger while watching this movie and that did hurt a lot, more than I enjoyed the picture.