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The action in this short film of King Lear is going to Bowl, along with what Luke McKernan refers to as a certain wild vigour. So hold on to your hats.

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Billy Ranous, playing Lear, will evict the fool from the throne-- fools and kings being more or less interchangeable in the world of Lear. And the fairy tale resonances of the three daughters

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played, and I believe, by Florence Auer, Julia Arthur, and Julia Swayne Gordon, are brought home by the hierarchically arranged introductory shot. Unfortunately, this Vitagraph one-reeler

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has picked up a fair amount of water damage and other forms of deterioration over time, which intermittently impedes the clarity of the image. It's tempting to suggest that for a drama

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in which the limitations of sight are central, see better Lear. I stumbled when I saw, and so on. The disturbances to our clear sight

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are in themselves an interesting additional filter through which to watch the film. But that's bunkum, of course. It's just annoying that we can't now

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have access to the crisp and clear print that the film's first audiences would have seen in 1909. It's one of the accidents of history that this particular film has survived in its German language

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print-- the Herzog Von Kent-- the Duke of Kent, is Banished. While the division of the kingdom plays out its own familiar coordinates, its Cordelia's resistance to the imperatives of the moment in centre frame that focus

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the scene for us. Meantime, Kent is banished. The others duplicitously pledge their allegiance to the crown. The two suitors for Cordelia are summoned, one of whom,

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burgundy, now withdraws his suit, and the other of whom France gratefully takes up the disinherited Cordelia. And all of this plot business is shoehorned efficiently into a breathless run of on screen action that

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requires a certain familiarity with the play to make sense. Lear and his elder-daughters now take it in turns to cast off Cordelia with a series of haughty gestures of dismissal,

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adding to the courted pathos of Cordelia's situation. It's worth noting the Vitagraph logo on these intertitles-- the eagle with raised wings forming a prominent V. It was usual for production companies

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to brand title cards in this way, to advertise the Company, name and to guard against practises of film piracy, and in the early cinema period, the Vitagraph eagle had excellent brand recognition,

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both in America and across the world through the company's unparalleled distribution networks. And here, as Kent is helped by a servant to adopt a disguise so that he can evade

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his official banishment, we see the Vitagraph eagle has even found its way onto the set in an insistent piece of product placement, it has been imprinted on the wall, low right there, reminding us of the provenance of the film

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and ensuring that no footage from here could be passed off as the work of any other company. And so off goes the disguised Kent, once again, to serve the King who may yet need him.

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As Lear arrives at Goneril's castle, we can admire the work of the set dressers here. Unlike the charming Vitagraph Midsummer Night's Dream made later that year, or the company's Twelfth Night

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made the following year, this 1909 Lear is exclusively studio bound, and so lacks that sense of space that the location shoots would subsequently make possible. Nevertheless, this castle exterior is prettily designed

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in ways that give a lift to the visuals, even if at odds with the tonal flavour of the scene. So now Kent in disguise, who has found his way back into Lear's favour by in the play,

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declaring he can keep honest counsel and deliver a plain message bluntly, takes an early opportunity to deliver a plain message very bluntly to Oswald, who's been goading Lear. Goneril takes umbrage at the treatment

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her servant has received. Lear inveighs against the ingratitude of his eldest daughter-- "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless

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child." And all the visual codes in his performance now register that the seeds of his madness are sown. The scene now shifts to Gloucester's castle,

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where we will also find Regan and Cornwall. Here, Oswald and Kent's mutual antagonism continues, prompting Oswald to run out of shot towards and then past the camera in a welcome departure from the more usual

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left and right theatre style entrances and exits that typically predominate on these studio-bound shoots. Unlike theatrical space in a proscenium arch theatre, implied cinematic space can, of course,

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be suggestively behind our spectator position, as that exit and re-entrance imply. Regan intervenes, siding with her sister's servant against her father's and Cornwall,

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and she called for the stocks. Gloucester arrives, is horrified that Lear's servant has been used in this way, tries to calm things, and promises to make entreaties on Kent's behalf,

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while Oswald continues to Goad and taunt. I like the actor playing Kent here. He's less cartoonish in style than some, and definitely has some on screen authority about him.

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And so to the subplot in which as the intertitle tells us, Edmund betrays his brother Edgar to his father. The film d'Arte Italiana Re Lear Production sensibly omits this subplot, whereas the later Tannhauser King Lear of 1916,

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starring Frederick Warde, makes a real feature of it, but that later film has the space to do so over a much more accommodating three reels. The plot necessarily letter that we see fleetingly on screen

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there translates as, "The respect that we owe to our father makes our life difficult. He withholds our wealth until we are too old to enjoy it. When our father is asleep, I will kill him.

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Edgar." And it's not, of course, that early 20th century spectators could read a stack faster than we can. The letter would simply have been on screen

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for longer than that in its early exhibition run. But here and elsewhere, we're missing some frames from the print. It should also be said that the whole run of Vitagraph

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Shakespeare films and the Company produced 12 between 1908 and 1912, was released at a time when the role of the live film lecturer was at its height, and was in fact particularly recommended

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for Shakespearean releases. So in the venues that could afford such a thing, a film lecturer or explainer would give a talk as accompaniment to the film

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to clarify and comment upon its action. So as Gloucester pursues the Sun he believes has wronged him, once again, into the fictional space behind the camera, and Edgar turns himself into Poor Tom

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to save his life, the subplot continues to be pursued at a dizzying lick, despite the constrictions of the one real format. The film trades on a fairly conventional understanding

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of the play, as is indicated by that intertitle-- Die Beiden Schlechten-- The Two Bad Daughters. In fact, in its wordless animation for the moving pictures of a series of fairly conventional

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visual images of the play, the film reconnects us with the drama's fairy tale underpinning-- a world of simple truths in which daughters are indeed wicked or virtuous.

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And old king may be foolish but redeemable, and all moral touchstones are secure. Coming face to face with the harsh treatment of both of his daughters who unite against him in this scene,

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Lear reaches increasingly for a world beyond, in an ever more extravagant series of wild gestures. There is none of the precision of gesture that the pantomimic acting codes of the 19th century dictated to denote particular

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emotional states. For those engaged in theatrical mime, this is less disciplined, more general stuff. A man appealing to the heavens by flinging his arms

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around in a repeated visual quotation of mad Lear, as understood from edition illustrations and paintings. The backdrop of Stonehenge signals the heath here. It constitutes a recognisable ancient English landmark out

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there in the wilds for an American and worldwide audience. And in fact, this scene as a whole works as an efficiently summoned image for the stripped down version of the play, Lying Latent,

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in our visual imaginations. George Orwell's words about the crystallised images of Lear-- quoted also in the commentary on the Italian Lear-- come to mind again.

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Here are a few edited highlights from that 1947 essay. "Shut your eyes and think of King Lear. What do you see? Here, at any rate, is what I see.

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A majestic old man with flowing white hair and beard, wandering through a storm, cursing the heavens in company with a fool and a lunatic. Presently, the scene shifts and the old man

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is holding a dead girl in his arms. This is the bare skeleton of the play." End quotation. But now Madley has given some solace

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from the lacerating rain and lightning flashes that the film has had so much fun producing by Gloucester's arrival-- an act of rescue, a gesture of mercy for which he will, of course, pay dearly in the next scene.

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Once again, this is a plot-busy scene crowded with players in a relatively small space-- an action packed Regan and Cornwall now consider Gloucester a traitor and start to torment him,

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before sending him to have his eyes gouged out upstage. An incensed servant runs Cornwall through with a sword. Regan takes comfort in Edmund's companionship and Gloucester reappears from depth of field.

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The eye gouging has happened in a piece of Coy blocking, entirely reminiscent of stage practise. Gloucester is thrown out with instructions to find his own way to Dover, and the pitiable sight of his brutally blinded father

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is spotted by the legitimate son in disguise, Edgar, who binds his father's eyes and offers himself a sighted companion to the father who cannot recognise him. And so it is that with Dover cliffs

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visible on a painted backdrop, Edgar, as Poor Tom, leads his father on a real and metaphorical journey away from his tormentors and away from despair. Here, they encounter a distracted

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Lear, whose clothes are now ripped, and who is wearing his fantastical crown that the play tells us, is made of idle weeds, but which here, is clearly the same straw crown that Edgar, as Poor Tom,

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himself had adopted earlier. There is something satisfying about Lear having appropriated Poor Tom's crown, since in the play he attempts to unbutton here to join the admired honesty of Poor

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Tom in nakedness. Here, however, he clearly adopts the straw crown as a humble replacement for the more ostentatious one he wore in the opening scene.

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This scene of the reunion of Cordelia with Lear is accompanied-- as the court tradition stipulates-- by soft music played here on a lyre that is a stock property for Vitagraph,

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making recognisable appearances in other films, including Julius Caesar, released in December 1908. Julia Swayne Gordon, who plays Cordelia here, also appears as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream,

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and as Olivia in Twelfth Night on this DVD. The scene makes a real effort to capture the pathos of the moment. But struggles in comparison with the Francesca Bertini-Ermete

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Novelli equivalent seen to find the stillness and the wonder that the scene can potentially unlock. Constrictions on both space and time are cluttered blocking, and a conspicuously unpersuasive lyre-player did little,

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I suspect, to help this. Things come to a head as Regan and Edmund on the one hand, and Goneril and Albany on the other, gather their forces ready for the battle--

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all spiced up by some sisterly jealousy and spousal disaffection. A heavily-visored Edgar appears with a letter for Albany, which we assume from the play denounces Edmund and Goneril,

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and his identity is revealed. A few months later, the London bioscope was to commend the Vitagraph A Midsummer Night's Dream on its accessibility and appeal, even

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to those not familiar with the Shakespeare play. The same was not said of King Lear, which understandably met with more cautious reviews. In this Lear, a pointlessly faithful attention

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to lots of relatively minor plot details is too often privileged over finding a beautiful film moment or even just narrating the story clearly. This makes the film feel more like an animated,

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illustrative companion piece for those who already know the drama than a means of telling the story accessibly for those who don't. The introductory shots by which we first

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meet characters-- the only time I'm aware of Vitagraph inserting such a sequence-- suggests the Company knew the film was in need of some additional clarification to be intelligible.

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A clear and articulate live lecturer could have made a significant difference to how the film was received, of course, but that was far from assured in all venues.

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And then comes the moment of stage business that Samuel Johnson declared unbearable. Re-enter Lear with Cordelia, dead in his arms. This brings to life the other kernel picture that Orwell says

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defines the way in which the play lives in our cultural imagination. The old man, the dead girl, the pointless death, the lack of consolation, even this wordless

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and speedy rendition, catching at the big emotional cadences to which it economically alludes. And the surviving print runs out shortly before the film would have done for its first audiences.

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As ever, the beginnings and endings of a reel proving most materially vulnerable to damage and decay.