Cheap Origins of the Gangster Film: The Narrow Road(1912) & Alias Jimmy Valentine(1915) (Video) (Elmer Booth, Mary Pickford, Charles Hill Mailes, Christy Cabanne, Max Davidson, Robert Warwick, Robert Cummings, Alec B. Francis, Frederick Truesdell, Ruth Shepley) (D.W. Griffith, Maurice Tourneur) Price

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Customer Reviews of Origins of the Gangster Film: The Narrow Road(1912) & Alias Jimmy Valentine(1915)

Almost a Century Has Passed!
These two exquisite silents are perhaps the best in the now available three-disc set from The Library of Congress entitled The Origins of Film, 1900-1926, but you can have them in this VHS edition for about a tenth of the price. <
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>Maurice Tourneur's 1915 full-length feature Alias Jimmy Valentine is based on an O'Henry short story and is a strikingly beautiful example of the early gangster film. Thought for many years to be lost, a print eventually surfaced in Australia and is presented here with its original color tints. You can't watch the extraordinary "overhead" view of the bank heist without thinking of Rafifi. With shots taken inside Sing Sing Prison, Alias Jimmy Valentine is admittedly a moral tale but not without its humor. Tourneur's elegant use of lighting and design make this artistically the most important film in the Library of Congress set and a little masterpiece. <
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>D.W. Griffith's The Narrow Road was a little-known one-reeler from 1912. Except for a paper print of the film, a thousand-foot roll of photographic paper that was submitted to the Library of Congress for copyright protection, all copies of this film are gone. Mary Pickford, barely 19 and uncredited in her performance, would four years later be the highest paid and most recognizable person on the planet. This short was a prototype for Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley filmed later in 1912. <
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>Both films are nicely accompanied by Philip Carli, who composed and performed the piano score especially for this release.