User Reviews

A little girl whose mother is dying, seems to bring love to the shy people who live in the same building. There is a classic stereotypical spinster living across the hall from a middle aged, shy, friendless man. When the little girl forces her way into their lives they begin to see how they need to act for things to work out. She is not to be deterred, even when treated badly. She is, unknowingly, a little angel who can't help but soften even the hardest heart. Of course, while they need her, she also needs them.

Biograph Baby Ynez Seabury melts the hearts of a lonely bachelor (Dell Henderson) and a prim spinster (Kate Bruce) in this typically sentimental drama from D. W. Griffith. The plot is as far-fetched as most of these early films were, but it's well acted - particularly by Bruce, who gives a remarkably natural performance under Griffith's direction.

This short feature is simple and markedly sentimental, but it is presented with skill. As a result, it makes its simple point effectively, and while there were many weightier dramas made in the early 1910s, this one holds up as well as most.

The story is about a young girl who becomes a "Sunbeam" into the lives of others, and it is vaguely similar to the more familiar story of "Pollyanna". The material could easily have become hopelessly maudlin, but Griffith keeps it on track most of the time. The very young girl who plays the "sunbeam" seems to respond well to Griffith's direction.

Another thing that helps make the film work is the amusing contrast between the "sunbeam" girl and the other children in the film, who are much more impish. This also makes it notable as a rare instance of humor in a Griffith film. It might not be anything profound, but it's a pretty good film of its kind, and it really remains as worthwhile as it was in its own day.

In this early tearjerker, directed by D.W. Griffith, friendless bachelor Dell Henderson and lonely spinster Claire McDowell live across the hall from each other. The children in the neighborhood play dirty, rotten tricks on them. Oddly enough, the two loveless ones detest each other. The children, led by a little girl named Sunbeam, could bring the two adults together…

Sunbeam is played by Ynez Seabury, the little girl from "The Miser's Heart" (1911); she is still running around loose, but she has a better reason in "The Sunbeam". Her mother, Kate Bruce, has an important supporting performance, which she plays perfectly. Implicit message to ladies: if you don't want to wear a frumpy collared outfit like Ms. McDowell's spinster, better get yourself a husband!

**** The Sunbeam (2/26/12) D.W. Griffith ~ Dell Henderson, Claire McDowell, Kate Bruce, Ynez Seabury

There are a lot of little things that happen in this short silent film, done in 1912. In a nutshell, though, circumstances bring a plain old maid, an equally unattractive middle-aged guy, and a soon-to-be orphan all together to live (hopefully) happy ever after.

This matchmaking feat is accomplished the by the young girl's nerve and prankster kids nearby. The kid walks into people's apartments as if she lives there and winds up softening the old codgers. The other kids, by playing tricks with doorknobs and fake "Scarlet Fever" signs, inadvertently wind up playing cupid.

Overall, this was a pretty clever and fairly entertaining little silent movie. Ynez Seabury, as the little girl, can be seen looking at the out-of-sight director several times but, hey, it was just beginning of movies. Not everyone could be a Shirley Temple. Claire McDowell was good as "the spinster" and Dell Henderson adequate as "the bachelor." It's a cute film.

Sunbeam, The (1912)

*** (out of 4)

D.W. Griffith film about feuding neighbors and how they are changed by meeting a young girl. As with the majority of Griffith films, this one here has sentimental written all over it but it's still a pretty good story even though you know where it's going. Griffith had done this type of film countless times before 1912 but that doesn't take away any of the heart the director brings to the film.

Available through Image as well as a few online sites. The Image print features a new score and a clear picture.

Griffith's career at Biograph went in a kind of cycle. His earliest films tended to be big, outdoor action pieces, and he would eventually work his way back to making some very polished action films like Battle of Elderbrush Gulch and Judith of Bethulia. However, in the middle of this period, from 1911 to 1913 he mostly worked on a smaller canvas, focusing on acting performances and refining his use of indoor space. This charming little comedy is among his most understated and intimate shorts.

The story of The Sunbeam is played out in just five indoor sets. It's one of what I call Griffith's "dollhouse" pictures. The layout of a building is shown through the arrangement of the rooms as if we are watching the scenes take place in an open-fronted dollhouse. The careful ordering of the shots, plus the way each set is shown (e.g. door on the right in the left-hand apartment and vice versa) mean we instantly grasp the set-up.

Griffith did not do many out-and-out comedies, but his handling of the genre is remarkable. What we are perhaps seeing here is the birth of comedy direction. Comedy performances had been filmed since the beginning of cinema, and Georges Melies in particular had a wonderful comic imagination and sense of timing. In The Sunbeam however, the very way it is filmed adds to the comedy. The establishment of the different spaces allows gags like the door handles being tied together work. The best of the actors' comic performances are allowed to play out in single takes, while the more farcical moments are punctuated by the edits. Even the symmetry of the two apartments gives an extra note of silliness to the unlikely romance of their tenants.

So Griffith was perhaps the first to realise that directing a comedy was not just about filming a comedian. Certainly his style had an impact upon Charles Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch. The Sunbeam is a forerunner of silent comedies such as Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle and Rene Clair's Italian Straw Hat, both of which use the camera as part of the comedy. With its dark undertones – typical, of course, of Griffith but not comedy in general – The Sunbeam also demonstrates how comic relief can give tragedy a bittersweet edge.

"The Sunbeam" is a simple and saccharine short film from D.W. Griffith's Biograph oeuvre, but it's well constructed within its crowded space of a two-floor tenement. The crosscutting between tenants and the match-on-action between apartments and the hallway is exemplary for its era. Title cards are actually welcome, including a bit of puns, such as "thawing" being both metaphorical in the sense of character relations and literal as to dinner.

The story, on the other hand, involving a little girl who leaves her room to play and under the belief that her dead mother is sleeping seems jarring next to the pranks of a gang of youngsters, including stealing a "Scarlet Fever" poster from the police and placing it next to a room door--forcing a bachelor and spinster to create a family with the recent orphan while in quarantine. I would probably check to see if the child has any relatives first, but I guess that would require leaving the confined area of the tenement, which the picture never does.

An Aitor Gametxo re-edited this film and posted in on Vimeo as "Variation on 'the sunbeam'" in 2011. Besides the split-screen effect looking like something Brian de Palma might've done had he made silent films, this video does a nice job of demonstrating the craft of Griffith and company's work in editing and staging.