User reviews

There had been movies about criminals before 1912, but they were solitary bad guys who worked their illegal activities alone. When D. W. Griffith''s "The Musketeer of Pig Alley" was released in November 1912, it set off a new genre in cinema: the gangster movie.

The term gangster derives from the term "gang," to which a criminal being a member of a criminal organization was a gangster. Here we have actor Elmer Booth, the Snapper Kid and the Musketeers gang leader (this is before Disney) wrecking committing illegal acts in a New York City neighborhood. His gang not only performs petty theft, like stealing the wallet of Lillian Gish's husband, but is in constant turf battles with rival gangs.

Elmer Booth's personality on screen as a cocky, bravado hoodlum served as a prime example for future actors who played gangsters to emulate, including James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Booth faced a brilliant future as an actor, but three years later he was killed in an automobile accident in a car driven by future "Dracula" director Tod Browning.

"Pig Alley" played a huge influence on director Martin Scorsese when he was creating his megahits "Goodfellas" and "The Gangs of New York."

The movie is also noted for filming the first "follow focus" shot in cinema. D. W. Griffith asked his cameraman, Billy Bitzer, to focus on Elmer Booth, leaving the background blurry as the gang members creep alongside the alley building walls. The story has it that Bitzer was confused how out of focus the frame should look like with just Booth sharply filmed. Supposedly Griffith took Bitzer to a local art museum posting artwork with fuzzy backgrounds the director was looking for (probably Impressionist paintings). The cameraman must have understood since the famous shot appears at the 13 minute mark of "Pig Alley," a sequence so influential that moviemakers duplicate the style today. Also known as rack focus for changing focal points, the technique is effective when performed properly.

A pioneering short by filmmaking giant D.W. Griffith, "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" is a decent flick featuring one of the first depictions of gangsters onscreen and one of the early uses of follow focus. A series of events portray the life of the poor in all its rough messiness: death, arguments, gang wars, fistfights, shootouts, date rapes, crowded and dirty streets, shabby lodgings, etc.. Elmer Booth personified the image of the gangster of early film with his cocky and self-assured jauntiness setting the stage for future tough guys like James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Lillian Gish was lovely as her usual ethereal self showing that she was Griffith's muse from the very start. Like most films of this vintage the main appeal is the view into the distant past, a time travel seeing people and their surroundings from long ago. Added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its historical importance, this is an interesting artifact from a bygone time that is still viewable for its historical interest and artistic quality.

The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) : Brief Review -

Griffith sows an Unbelievable idea of Goodwill in One of the First Gangster Film Ever Made in Cinema World. Largely known as The First (or one of the first) Gangster film Ever made, The Musketeers of Pig Alley is still very exciting even without long runtime and heroic/villainous dialogues. I have seen lots of Crime/Gangster dramas till date and have always wondered why there was no film made ever made which could have used goodwill for the sake gangster's character to give him a deserving chance? At last, i found my catch here. The idea i have been looking for was already sown by Genius Griffith way before audience started loving crime dramas i.e post 1930s. A young wife and her musician husband live in poverty in a New York City tenement. The husband's job requires him to go away for for a number of days. On his return, he is robbed by the neighborhood gangster. A highly predictable drama (for today's time i mean) follows the rest of the narrative and the allegorical climax of 'deserving chance' ends this film on a high note. As it states, "One good turn deserves another" and "Links in the System", you can't stop clapping for Griffith here. I couldn't stop gushing over Lillian Gish, as she looked so Cute (in every film she looked cute, damn!). Walter Miller was good at his part but the gangsters leader Elmer Booth literal took my breath away with his ferocious looks and attitude. Overall, The Musketeers of Pig Alley is a great watch to learn many sensible ethics that were never used in any Gangster film. I wish somebody had the same brain as Griffiths to make similar intellectual drama in talkies era. Don't miss this another fantastic film of Griffith.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest

Most aspects of this short melodrama were made with skill. The acting is generally quite good, the characters are interesting and believable, and the plot is interesting even though a couple of details strain credibility. It's probably one of the very earliest movies about gangs or gangsters, and it portrays the "Musketeers" and their affairs in a way that is more believable than any of the romanticized portrayals that came into vogue later on.

The cast features some names well-known to silent film fans, with Dorothy Gish and many other familiar names. Even some of the small roles feature talented performers, so perhaps it is no surprise that the movie features a high standard of acting.

The story shows the interactions between the gang of "Musketeers" and some other persons who have the misfortune to live nearby. The story and the production make pretty good use of the possibilities, and aside from one or two overly convenient plot turns, they do so in a worthwhile way.

Quite a bit happens in just over 15 minutes, with constant action that is photographed and edited well enough that you largely forget that it was all done using the limited photographic options of its time. This is a good one to watch for anyone interested in very old films.

Early crime film directed by D.W. Griffith. Hyped in the subtitle as "Unparallel drama inspired and played on the streets of the American city - Bold - Truthful"! Lillian Gish lives with her musician husband Walter Miller near Pig Alley, an area frequented by gangsters. The head Musketeer is Elmer Booth. Gangster Booth tries to put the make on Ms. Gish, and mugs Mr. Miller as he returns home with his hard-earned pay. Stumbling into a gang shootout, Miller recognizes Musketeer Booth as his mugger. What will he do?

Here, in "The Musketeers of Pig Alley", Gish and Miller are better than when they are threatened by the temptress in "The Mothering Heart" (1913). The acting is more natural, and you really sympathize with the couple. Booth is an endearing "Little Caesar". The shootout is lively, and the thugs creeping along the alley walls into close-ups is quite memorable. The ending is played more for humor; it's not bad, but it breaks the mood of the movie.

****** The Musketeers of Pig Alley (10/31/12) D.W. Griffith ~ Lillian Gish, Walter Miller, Elmer Booth

I'm not going to go into the story because, in the IMDb plot summary, there is a thorough explanation of this tale provided by "American Mindscope and Biograph Co." It covers everything in this short, silent D.W. Griffth movie. I hadn't a silent film in a while, at least since watching most of Buster Keaton's and Harold Lloyd's comedies, so I had forgotten what a pretty woman Lillian Gish was in her youth. What confuses me, though, is that younger sister Dorothy is listed in the opening credits, not Lillian. What's the deal with that? Since Dorothy would have been about 14 at this time, it had to be Lillian in the lead role, as listed here by IMDb. At any rate, Lillian and the faces of the gangsters are really fun to watch. We get closeups of "The Snapper" and his really wild-looking sidekick, played by Harry Carey. Famous actor Lionel Barrymore also has a short role in year but, frankly, I didn't recognize him. By the way, I think Dorothy was one of the people in the crowd early on her brushes up against her sister, who then gives her a look. It was almost like an inside joke. Overall, this a bit confusing in parts because things happened pretty fast. I enjoyed the faces in here more than the story. A gave it a second look, trying to spot Dorothy and to understand the plot better. Afterward, however, I found this IMDb summary to be most helpful.

The Musketeers weren't excommunicated members of the French Royal Guard and Pig Alley wasn't a euphemism for Paris. The Musketeers were a small gang and Pig Alley was an alley somewhere in New York.

The main players were The Musician (Walter Miller), The Little Lady (Lillian Gish), The Snapper Kid - Musketeers' Gang Leader (Elmer Booth), and The Rival Gang Leader (Alfred Paget).

The Musketeers were menaces like any gang and everyone was afraid of them except for their rivals. If anyone was going to put an end to their reign of terror it was going to be their rival gang led by The Rival Gang Leader.

This short was a bit unfocused in the figurative and directional sense. It centered around the gang, but what was the gang doing? And what was up with the ending? I don't quite know and I think it was owing primarily to it being a silent film. Silent films are good, but sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures.

Free on YouTube.

This prototypical gangster movie is justly one of the best-known of Griffith's Biograph shorts, and may be his literal best. In it we see the director at his most confident and his most precise, as well an early opportunity to see Lillian Gish in a lead role.

The first half of the Musketeers of Pig Alley shows off some of Griffith's most finely crafted shot compositions. Working with several increasingly complex crowd scenes, he manages to keep each one unique, and continually draws our eyes to the most important part of the action, in spite of the degree of complexity. He daringly puts bits of business at the very edges of the frame – a puff of smoke stylishly announces the arrival of Elmer Booth, and later the barman offers a backhander from off-screen. Griffith even works in a joke on his own sense of formal symmetry when, in one street scene Lillian meets her sister Dorothy coming the way. As the two women pass each other, they pause, throw each other a quick glance, then carry on.

In the second half, we see what is arguably the finest use of parallel editing in all of Griffith's Biograph career. As with shot composition, the action climax here is laced with symmetry. Rather than a nail-biting ride-to-the-rescue, this is a tense clash between two opposing forces. Griffith matches up shots of the two rivals gangs as they seek each other out, gradually building up the tension before releasing it in a lightning-fast gunfight. It looks incredibly simple, yet it's so effective. This is the ancestor of John Ford's Western shoot-outs, and Sergio Leone's Mexican standoffs.

The acting is top-notch throughout, and only a few sparse intertitles are used to help the plot along. Gish proves herself adept at the slow, subtle style that was by now the standard at Biograph. Elmer Booth, who had floated around Biograph for a number of years making little impression, at last hits his stride here with a role that is perfect for him. In one memorable close-up during the build up to the shoot-out, he acts brilliantly with his face, looking menacing but also conveying a hint of fear. He also gives a great comic turn in the final scene. Had he not died a few years later he could have been a kind of James Cagney of the silent era – he has that same mean-faced gangster look.

If there is one weakness in The Musketeers of Pig Alley it is that Griffith sometimes actually seems to expect too much of his audience. There is a lot to take in, and some of the plot points are conveyed extremely subtly. Still, it has a terrific impact even on a first viewing, and remains one of the most ageless of all Griffith's pictures.

It's very odd. I just read through the two summaries and found they weren't exactly like the movie I saw. It is very possible there are multiple versions out there (that's true of MANY of Chaplin's shorts)--film distributors and theaters often chopped the films apart in those days. Perhaps those who saw it and wrote summaries saw versions with more or different inter-title cards, as there was really nothing about two rival gangs in the film I saw. Instead, a gang terrorizes a neighborhood and steals the money a man has saved. Later the man who was robbed sees the gang members in a dance hall. He and what appear to be his friends (not a rival gang) follow the gang and they all have a shootout--and the cops come to save the day. Now that I think about it, whose friends would just happen to have guns?

If you have ever wondered where Jimmy Cagney got some of his mannerisms, watch this film.

Elmer Booth and Harry Carey, early in the movie, portray two New York gangsters so much in the same way Cagney would 20 years later that you almost don't need any other reason to watch "Musketeers."

Watch Carey, playing an un-named character, hitch up his pants. Just great!

This is available in a poor print at YouTube, but watching it there -- or trying to -- will either irritate you or, I hope, drive you to find a good copy to own.

I saw this many years ago in a Griffith retrospective in Los Angeles, and have been in awe of it ever since.

Like so much Mr. Griffith did, it just set the standard for great film-making.

In what may be the first mob film DW Griffith establishes some of the genre nuances that remain staples to this day. The Musketeers of Pig Alley is a tense action filled study in nostalge de la boule, father of The Roaring Twenties grandfather of Mean Streets.

A struggling musician on New York's Lower East Side goes on tour and and a local thug tries moving in on wife who in return rebuffs him. He robs the husband upon return but also gets her out of a jam at great cost. In the interim a gang war breaks out.

Musketeers presents inner city life in graphic terms of overcrowding and squalor. Griffith does a fine job of balancing the two major story lines that intersect and further helped along by the innocent beauty of Lillian Gish and charismatic evil of Elmer Booth for casting Cagney. There's a well done suspense building montage into a gunfight (including a jarring close-up of Booth) along with a series of other moments that must have given pause to the folks out in the country to visit the Big Apple. Pig Alley is an an American pioneer.

DW Griffith did a fair share of fine work, feature and short films. Has everything that he has done been great? No, his Abraham Lincoln biopic which saw a rare foray into sound for him was a near-disaster and 'The Birth of a Nation' is controversial for good reason. When he was on form, his films were brilliant which is evident in 'Intolerance', 'Orphans of the Storm' and 'Way Down East' for example. While he is not one of my favourite directors, he was very influential in his day and a pioneer of silent film.

Of Griffith's numerous short films, 1912's 'The Musketeers of Pig Alley' is one of the best known, most influential at the time (with it being groundbreaking in the development of films about gangsters) and best regarded. There is a reason for all of that. 'The Musketeers of Pig Alley' is one of his best short films ('The Mothering Heart' is another one of his best) and a fine example of why Griffith deserved his fame. As far as his overall filmography goes, it for me is in the top half.

There are a few over-conveniences here and there, but there is a huge amount to recommend.

Lillian Gish as always captivates touchingly, while Elmer Booth personifies chilling foreboding without over-acting. The characters are interesting and don't come over as caricaturish. Griffith's direction is a big star here, technically impressive with some clever photography particularly and showing a real knack for a good deal of suspense and not too overheated melodrama.

Furthermore, 'The Musketeers of Pig Alley' is beautifully designed and made even more interesting by the photography and atmospheric lighting. The story is ceaselessly compelling throughout from the very start to the very close, it is only just under twenty minutes and a lot happens. All without feeling over-stuffed or rushed. The action thrills and there is a good deal of suspense.

In conclusion, very good. 9/10.

Possibly , this short 17min. film is first film-noir in history of cinema.There are living in poverty woman (almost fatal) and criminal who's not so bad how seems at first sight.And of cause dark criminal atmosphere of Pig Alley made in film-noir style too.One exception is happy end.But in this case happy end is more unexpected than tragic final.And therefore more interesting even for modern viewer.Excellent Griffith's staff do them job quick and accurate.They all (director,cinematographer,actors...) are good and professional.Nevertheless "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" not for the fans of crime genre.For study of roots(much killings,mystery and shock)better watch Louis Feuillade genius serials(Fantomas,Les Vampires,Judax).

Musketeers of Pig Alley, The (1912)

*** (out of 4)

D.W. Griffith film, which is considered to be the first gangster movie ever made. Griffith does a nice job showing off poor people back in the day and seeing NYC in 1912 is another added bonus. The performance by Dorothy Gish is very good and the supporting players are nice as well. The shootout in the alley remains exciting to this day.

Highly entertaining early film.

Also check out Regeneration (1915).

This is available through Kino, Image and Grapevine.