Those Awful Hats (1909)

You won't be disappointed!

Pretty Good

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Under the considered Biographs he has made "Those Awful Hats" is disparate; It's a simple, comical, farce with people in an audience going through an experience through a very different medium from any other excursions they were accustomed to and this certainly mirrors a different style to me. It's a different style as what's being experienced is a prestidigitation and that's slightly different to his usual tone in Cinema. It's almost like a Kinetoscope version of "Those Awful Hats" in its aspect ratio and anamorphic screen size, the way it's stretched out on its pristine format. Regardless of its short screen time, points of interest include Griffith's first wife, Linda Arvidson, as one of the stellar's in the movie and Mark Sinnet who is also in it. Apart from that, it's only really interesting as it is one of the first projects Griffith ever embarked on as prior to this he was a vaudevillian stage actor. He was also in "Rescued from an Eagle's Nest" in 1907.

This ultra-short film from movie pioneer D. W. Griffith isn't so much a film as a public service announcement. In the early years of cinema there were no restrictions on women wearing hats in a theatre (although men had to remove theirs) a situation that led to some heated moments due to the size of some ladies' bonnets.The film takes place in a tiny cinema, and Griffith makes use of a split-screen technique to show the second film taking place on the cinema's screen. It looks fairly primitive today, but was probably quite effective in its day. As the film unfolds, more and more ladies wearing increasingly outlandish hats take their seats at the front of the cinema, blocking the view of those sitting behind. Mass pandemonium almost breaks out until the kind of bucket contraption used by diggers descends from the ceiling to remove one lady's hat before accidentally picking up a second lady who is still attached to hers.It's a fairly amusing picture, and Griffith, who also wrote the piece, displays a sense of humour that he is not normally noted for, but at two-and-a-half minutes it's definitely as long as it needs to be.

Those Awful Hats (1909) *** (out of 4) D.W. Griffith comedy about a movie crowd getting angry because the women's large hats are blocking the screen. This is shorter than most of the shorts from this period but it's a very funny little gem.Adventures of Dollie, The (1908) *** 1/2 (out of 4) The first (of 400+) film directed D.W. Griffith is about a pair of gypsies who kidnap a three-year-old girl. When the girl's parents come looking for her the gypsies hide her in a barrel, which they accidentally drop in the river. Griffith's skill is certainly in full display here as his use of editing is right on the mark as he builds suspense of the girl going down the river. A wicked sense of humor is also on display here.

While often considered as one of the most (if not "THE" most) influential filmmakers of all time, American director D.W. Griffith started his career on film in 1908 in a very humble way: as an actor in short films under the orders of Edwin S. Porter, head of Edison's Film Studio. His luck would change soon, as that very same year he was offered the chance to direct shorts for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, and it was there where he truly fell in love with cinema. In less than a year, Griffith learned the job, and soon became a master of the medium's many tricks and techniques. It wouldn't take him too long to start directing short films of excellent quality, a path that would culminate with the making of his first masterpiece, 1915's movie "The Birth of a Nation".One of the movies where the young Griffith began to show that mastery he had acquired so quickly was the short film "Those Awful Hats", a 2 and a half minutes movie done with the purpose of being a theatrical public service announcement (probably the first of its kind). In "Those Awful Hats", the action takes place in a typical screening in the nickelodeons of cinema's early years. The audience is enjoying a movie when suddenly, a gentleman (Mack Sennett) with a top hat enters the room and tries to find a seat for him and her companion. Loud and impolite, the man bothers the public constantly, however, this is not the audiences' main problem, as a group of ladies takes a seat and refuses to remove their big and ludicrous hats, an action that alienates even more the audience. Fortunately, the theater has an interesting and effective device to remove such undesirable persons: a giant steel bucket.Told by the heads of Biograph to conceive a short movie to tell the females among the audience to remove their bothersome hats when attending a screening, D.W. Griffith wrote and directed this very creative announcement that was both funny and informative at the same time. Making fun of the big hats that were fashionable in those years, as well as of the lack of courtesy that existed (and sadly still exists today) during screenings, Griffith certainly puts on film what many audiences through the history of cinema have desired to have at least once, a machine created to remove the troublesome persons among the audience. The gag is simple, but very effective, and it constituted one of the earliest examples of a public announcement devised to be shown before the feature films (a concept still used today in most theaters).Using a mixture of special effects techniques (mainly the Dunning-Pomeroy Matte process), Griffith created a film that shows a very early use of the technique that decades later would evolve into the blue-screen technique. Not only he managed to put a film within a film, but also created an extremely good effect of a steel bucket pulling out stuff (and persons!) from the audience. While this movie was done only a year after his debut ("The Adventures of Dollie", 1908), it already shows that Griffith is comfortable at the director's seat and that he truly knows what he is doing. This is specially notorious not only in his use of special effects, but also in the very natural performances he gets from his cast (which includes many members of his stock company, including his wife, Linda Arvidson), as their reactions are believable and the use of slapstick very appropriate.While not exactly on the level of many of his better known masterpieces, "Those Awful Hats" is a very funny and historically important short movie that can give us an idea of how was cinema in the past, and how it seems that we as audience haven't changed that much in more than a century of film-making. It is also a testament of the how Griffith was always willing to experiment as all as of the mastery he had achieved in only a year making movies. Despite its short length, "Those Awful Hats" is definitely one of the most enjoyable Griffith shorts, as it shows that the director of Biograph's many drama and adventure films was also able to laugh. 7/10