The Sunday Intertitle: Give ’em an Ince

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“Lazy Sam is also in Love with Nanny.”

There’s a surprising cut early in Ralph Ince’s BROTHER BILL (1914). We’re in the (California?) Gold Rush, it seems. Bill’s brother arrives and chats up the romantic interest, played by Edith Storey. Sensing, perhaps, that the angle he’s chosen for the scene is great for scenic values but not so hot for this character interaction, Ince cuts to a slightly different perspective favouring his leading lady more:

The angle change is so slight the cut becomes a little jarring, but it’s rare to see two angles used to cover one interaction at this stage in cinema. It seems possible that the camera panned right to reframe, and Ince has simply trimmed out the reframing to give himself two static views.

The film is only 12 minutes long so I kept watching to see if he’d do this again. He didn’t. But he does construct scenes out of different spaces, bound together by principles of contiguity and POV.

He cuts from Jim chatting up Storey’s character to Bill at the door, and when he cuts back he has a tighter, more intimate angle.

The plot takes an unexpected turn when Bill straight-up abducts Nan from one of those dances where you have to leave your gun at the door (because dancing’ can so easily escalate into shootin’). Lazy Sam gets shot in the process.

Bill takes Nan off to live in the scenery. Jim leads the posse to bring him to justice and rescue Nan. But something is off here.

Kidnapper Bill displays the masculine complacency we see most commonly in a Clark Gable type. When Nan steals his revolver and threatens to shoot him, he is unconcerned. This macho smugness (winningly undercut in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT when Gable fails to stop cars with his thumb) I always found hateful, but it’s the mark of the leading man, not so much the villain (villains tend to be less confident in their male privilege — the hero might feel he can do rapey stuff because ultimately the girl will like it — the villain knows she won’t but doesn’t care — again, I hate all this).

Nan is unable to pull the trigger. I sort of feel this is because she’s not a killer, not because Bill wouldn’t be improved by a bullet inside him somewhere/

Then the posse arrive, unbeknownst to Bill. Jim takes aim. But he can’t kill Bill either. Defeated, he rides off, leading the posse with him. Nan surrenders to her fate. Note that this is not a wholly happy ending, Ince ends on the heartbroken Jim, head lowered so his hat brim hides his grief —

But it IS meant to be happy for Bill and Nan. Doesn’t play too well now, though.

Edith Storey was quite a considerable person, and a very fine actor on this basis. She doesn’t sell Nan’s change of heart, but only because she’s not given any kind of reason for it or even a moment in which she can be seen considering the situation. Edith got out of movies and apparently drove an ambulance in WWI and then in New York during the flu epidemic. She deserves better characters, and I think I’ll try to find some, because I like her work here.