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The Vitagraph Twelfth Night is the only film in the collection other than the Italian Lear, that has been scored just for solo piano. The composer Laura Rossi, tells me

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that the gentle piano figures at the opening of Twelfth Night here are intended to evoke the lapping of the waves in the world after the sea storm that has set the plot in motion. And it's the same musical figure which

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will later develop into the film's main love theme. The film was directed by the eminent English-born stage actor Charles Kent, who had joined Vitagraph in 1906 and quickly took up directing for them.

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Like photographs of Midsummer Night's Dream, this film is nicely enlivened by some pleasing location shooting. It stars little Florence Turner as Viola, and since she is, in many ways, the epitome

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of a thoroughly studio product and was very much part of the Vitagraph family, I hope you'll forgive me a lengthy aside about her, since I find aspects of her career not unrevealing about the workings of the studio

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itself. She'd had small parts in a number of earlier Vitagraph productions, during which time she had supplemented her acting wages slightly by sewing the canvases for the scenery as part

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of the collaborative all-hands-to-the-pump enterprise that was filmmaking in this period. The courted family feel of the Vitagraph operation seems to have translated into actual family connections coming

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good, too, since Florence Turner's actress mother, Frances Turner, appeared in a Vitagraph film, The Price of Big Bob's Silence, in 1912. The impression of a cosy, collaborative family

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in the Vitagraph production stable should not, however, obscure just how well professionalised, profitable, and even cutthroat the business side of the operation could be.

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The company's economic success can perhaps be engaged from the fact that in 1913, $24,000 was given away to employees in Christmas bonuses alone. In the same year that her mother was given work

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with Vitagraph, 1912, Florence was herself interestingly compensated for having missed out on the part of Juliet in the earlier 1908 Vitagraph film. This compensation came in the form

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of being cast in the Shakespearean spin off called An Indian Romeo and Juliet, in which she played Ethana, a Mohican princess, opposite Vitagraph's leading man, Maurice Costello, who played the Huron brave with whom

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her character tragically falls in love. The Shakespearean drama of the forbidden romance, secret marriage, and tragic ending of two young lovers from opposed families was, therefore,

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neatly transposed to a native American setting. The oft-visited contemporary project to refresh the story of the feuding Montagues and Capulets by resiting it in new contexts has, it seems,

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a considerable history. In this scene, we meet two bigger names, Julia Swayne Gordon again, Vitagraph's leading lady, as an eye-catching and ebullient Olivia,

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and Charles Kent as a deliciously haughty Malvolio. Since Charles Kent also directed this film, he seems to have done a good job in ensuring his own centrality to many setups.

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He is, in fact, a marvellous camera hogger. But then, we can hardly begrudge him that, since, in his stiff pomposity and smugly pedantic way of playing the smugly pedantic steward,

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he is often fun to watch. With a winning Englishness and a prominent and respectable acting career in tow, Charles Kent had brought with him to Vitagraph a series of high cultural associations that served well

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the Vitagraph project to promote educational and prestigious filmmaking, and which nicely confirmed its reputation as producers of quality films with a literary or historical flavour.

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Part of Vitagraph's pre-release puff for Twelfth Night in the Vitagraph bulletin read like this. "Most elaborate preparations are being made.

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A Shakespearean player of countrywide fame is one of the Vitagraph producers, and he has been given absolutely a free hand in the selection of special players." Charles Kent was certainly all round

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a weightier proposition than the other actor-director at Vitagraph, Billy rawness, energetic and pathos-laden and, of course, comic. Though rawness could certainly be on screen, as

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is evident in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Kent's cultural credentials could potentially appeal to a section of the market that might not otherwise have felt that moving pictures were for them.

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But as the director of Twelfth Night, he was lauded in terms that far transcended the aesthetics of the performance or even the classical associations of theatrical class

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that he apparently embodied in his actorly person. As had so often been the case with Shakespeare film releases from 1899 onwards, considerable claims were made for what a brush with high culture

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could do by implication, plebeian audiences of the moving picture houses. A review in The Moving Picture World loftily announced that the Vitagraph Twelfth Night, and I quote,

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"Elevates and improves the literary taste of the great mass of the people performing in this way, a service which cannot be measured in material terms. Such work is in the nature of an educational service,

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which is deserving of the heartiest support of all who are working for the improvement of humanity." The elaborate preparation for the Twelfth Night, to which Vitagraph had alluded, were

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to do with the scenic attributes of this film, which certainly doesn't scant on well-dressed sets. The actress who plays Maria here is not known, but she has an energetic joie de vivre and a naturalness

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about her, which very nicely counterpoints Kent's precious high handedness and self-consciously assumed dignity. It should perhaps be noted that Kent often advertises the fact

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that he is speaking in terribly, clearly enunciated ways in the course of this film, from which, of course, spoken language is obviously absent. In allowing himself that rare thing

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in any of these films, a mid-shot, Kent evidently wanted this film to be more than simply a highly compressed plot romp. He wanted the detail of actorly expression of his, at least,

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to receive some privileged attention. It's perhaps worth noting that in this production, the impishly forged letter makes no appeal to Malvolio to appear in particular garb in Olivia's presence.

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Although, as it were, off his own bat, he will nevertheless appear cross-gartered in due course. This much abbreviated version of the letter is offered as a shorthand for a fuller set of instructions

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that it is assumed men in the audience would already know. As Viola Cesario rues her fate, and Olivia inadvertently woos a woman, I'm going to talk for a few moments about another standard Vitagraph marketing strategy

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to keep their company name, their brand, as we would now say, in the public eye. The company logo was an eagle, whose raised wings formed a V, which also nicely stood for Vitagraph.

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Earlier Vitagraph films used the logo insistently on all title cards. This slightly later production from 1910, however, seems more secure in its,

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by then, very well-established company identity and is content to use it sometimes, and to let its rather long plot summaries stand alone without the company advertisement at others.

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The use of the logo is apparently indicative, partly of the studio's anxiety to protect their own intellectual and commercial property against practises of film piracy from less respectable quarters.

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The fear seems to have been that in a very fast-moving and voracious market, unscrupulous operators might steal film stock and then attempt to pass it off as their own,

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thus saving themselves production costs. To guard against such illicit practises, and at least as importantly, to take the opportunity to advertise their own company label,

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studios habitually displayed their own company logo regularly throughout their films, the title cards being the easiest place to parade it with ease. But Vitagraph also went one step further than this.

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In a rather insistent piece of product placement, the Vitagraph V was also brazenly included as part of the set in some of their films, though, as it happens, not in this one.

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In the Vitagraph Romeo and Juliet, for example, there is a circled V prominently displayed in several places throughout the film. At the end of the Vitagraph Julius Caesar,

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the Roman Eagles that appear above the SPQR banners are, in fact, Vitagraph eagles, an eloquent elision between a film company and an imperial power, which was perhaps intended as a cheeky covert assertion

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of Vitagraph's own imperial aspirations. Moreover, the same eagle was, of course, also the symbol of America itself, thus simultaneously associating Vitagraph with two

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different imperial powers. And a freestanding model of the Vitagraph eagle is given some solo screen time in the Vitagraph King Lear, with no pretence of narrative or thematic relevance to the scene.

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Commercial promotional strategies were sometimes, it seems, allowed to win out over narrative imperatives. But let's return to Vitagraph's Illyria. Just as mistaken identities are being sorted out,

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the world is falling out into reassuringly heterosexual pairings, and Malvolio, in due course, will complain about having been most notoriously abused. Although, of course, in this film,

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in fact, he's been far less notoriously abused than he is in the Shakespeare play. The film has a little footage missing from the end, as also from the beginning, but there are just enough frames

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surviving of a final coda scene to see that the Vitagraph film gives us the scene that Shakespeare teasingly denies us, a Viola restored to her female self as Orsino's mistress and his fancy's queen.