Suburban Life in 1904 Sucked

Note: This is the thirtieth in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my fifth favorite 1904 film, THE SUBURBANITE, directed by Wallace McCutcheon and Frank Marion.
THE SUBURBANITE (1904) feels weirdly ahead of its time. The mise en scène, subject matter, and characters could fit among its peers much more comfortably eight or nine years later. It feels like a relative to the early comedy films of Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, and/or Keystone Studios…just not quite as funny.

At first blush, THE SUBURBANITE isn’t an incredibly exciting or innovative film. It might not really be at second blush. But some subtle elements convey an evolving method of filmmaking that would come to define the classical Hollywood style in the mid to late 1910s. To be clear, however, THE SUBURBANITE is not a “Hollywood” film. Like almost all of the American film industry at the time, its maker, Biograph, was based in New Jersey and New York City. But Biograph did end up having a part in creating the legend that is Tinseltown.
Biograph, formerly known as American Mutoscope, was founded in 1895 by former Thomas Edison apprentice and probably the true “godfather” of American cinema: William K.L. Dickson. I’ve written about him before; Dickson was an incredibly important early cinema figure, and when he left Edison to form Mutoscope/Biograph (which he promptly left itself two years later), that importance nevertheless didn’t stop. Biograph eventually incubated a lot of the talent that would stand as the first solid wave of recognizable film stars, writers, producers, and directors…even if it didn’t really intend that to be so.

Biograph, by the time it went defunct in 1916, was already considered an old-fashioned studio. Typically, the company didn’t provide credit for the filmmakers or people on screen, a practice that had gone out of vogue along with the first wave of film production that began with the likes of Edison, the Lumière brothers, and Georges Méliès. It produced over 3000 short films but only 12 features, and at that a few years or so after features had proven themselves artistically and commercially viable. By then, it was too late.
Before it went out of business, however, Biograph had reinvented itself from an actuality studio to a narrative house focusing on comedies, and eventually, dramas. THE SUBURBANITE, in fact, was one of the first narrative films the company made, and started a wave of talent that included Mary Pickford, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Lionel Barrymore, Mabel Normand, Mack Sennet, and, perhaps most famously, D.W. Griffith. Griffith directed about a film a week at Biograph from 1908 to 1913, after graduating from a writer and actor, among them some of his earliest successes like THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (1912), the first gangster film, and IN OLD CALIFORNIA (1910). The latter is believed to be the first film shot in Hollywood, California, and in a way, it paved the way for the industry’s relocation from the Tri-state area to the sunny West Coast.

But, of course, THE SUBURBANITE wasn’t directed by Griffith. This is a long way of explaining the importance of Biograph’s role in the early days of the film industry; THE SUBURBANITE’s place as one of the company’s first narrative shorts puts a certain amount of significance on it as well. And, in a way, Griffith’s rise is due to (one of) the director(s) of THE SUBURBANITE: Wallace McCutcheon.
Remember how I said Biograph wasn’t good at giving credit to its stable of talent? Well, it wasn’t even good at keeping things straight internally. Not only is it unclear who exactly directed THE SUBURBANITE, which Wallace McCutcheon was involved in its making could even stand to be scrutinized. You see, both Wallace McCutcheon, Sr. and Wallace McCutcheon, Jr. worked for Biograph. And yet, there was only one entry for Wallace McCutcheon in their records and internal credits. Fortunately, we know that Wallace the Senior was almost certainly the one involved with THE SUBURBANITE. He worked at American Mutoscope/Biograph from 1897 until 1905, worked at Edison for just two years, and after being passed up for a raise, returned to Biograph, when he became sick in 1908. His son, Wallace the Junior, replaced his father as the principal director of the studio, but his poor performance led to Biograph replacing him with a promising newcomer: D.W. Griffith. Griffith’s success led to Biograph leaving both Wallaces out in the cold.

So, as I said, McCutcheon, Sr. paved the way for Griffith…just not really of his own volition, beside an unsubstantiated story that McCutcheon bought Griffith’s first scenario. But the certainty of which Wallace worked on THE SUBURBANITE is due to Jr’s work at Biograph really beginning with Sr’s second stint at Biograph in 1907 and 1908. After recovering from his illness, McCutcheon, Sr. worked as a director for the American division of Georges Méliès’ Star Films, run by his older brother Gaston. The company moved to San Antonio, Texas from Fort Lee, New Jersey in 1910, and McCutcheon reportedly went with it. Other reports say that he never truly recovered from his 1908 illness, and died soon after arriving in Texas. But who knows? There are no records of his death.
Also often credited as director of THE SUBURBANITE is Frank Marion. Coming into the film business as a sales manager, Marion also added screenwriting to his duties at Biograph, often in collaboration with McCutcheon, Sr. THE SUBURBANITE scenario was almost certainly crafted by Marion, and as was often the case with their films, McCutcheon most likely took over the duties we would now associate with directing, i.e. staging shots, working with the actors, etc. However, the film industry lacked a lot of the distinct demarcation we now expect from the crediting of films today; it’s quite possible that Marion helped out “directing” certain aspects of the scenario alongside McCutcheon. Ultimately, the directing credit could likely go to the pair; Marion certainly had an equal part in crafting the scenario of the film, which at the time, would often manifest in direction on set as well. Marion would leave Biograph in 1907, founding his own studio alongside George Klein and Samuel Long, Kalem Company. Kalem would end up making some of my favorite films of the early 1910s; it was sold to Vitagraph in 1917 and Marion became part of its management. He died in 1963 at age 94.

So, let’s sum all this history up: THE SUBURBANITE was likely directed by both Wallace McCutcheon, Sr. and Frank Marion, McCutcheon’s later illness would bring Griffith into the Biograph fold, and Griffith’s success at the studio would pave the way for Hollywood production and, of course, Griffith’s own critically lauded career. But what about the movie itself!?!
THE SUBURBANITE, as it briefly shows the struggles of a family from the city moving into the suburbs, is not overtly funny. It pulls back and forth from over-the-top frustrations to small squabbles; the best part of the film is when the mother and father get frustrated with the carelessness of the moving men, who promptly intentionally break much of their furniture in response. The only other true comic set piece comes at the end, when the manic wife/mother starts chasing her family with cookware and is arrested, an uncomfortably dark look into how the world treated female “hysteria” at the time. The film ends with the husband/father putting a “for sale” sign back in front of the house.

These moments certainly feel like some sort of commentary on suburban living and the upper (what would now be more like the middle) class, but since I did not live in 1904, nor am I super aware of social and political commentary of the time, it’s hard to guess exactly what the angle is. Ultimately, however, I see the perspective of McCutcheon and Marion, as upper management personnel at a New York/New Jersey-based film studio, shaping the recent, newly created trend of “suburban” living into a hassle. THE SUBURBANITE is inherently a privileged film, especially for the state of financial affairs for most people in 1904, and so what it has to say about moving and dealing with neighbors and movers resonated within that sphere. However, today, suburban living hits a much larger American audience, and its relatable domestic foibles (besides the arrested mother) can still ring true, at least for me as an admittedly very lucky middle class white American.
The throughline to later American film comedy comes primarily through the film’s staging. Much of the film takes place outside, but when it does come in to studio stages, continuity cuts maintain this really believable, realistically muted world for the comedic scenes to take place in. Narrative films were already leaving their stagebound roots by 1904, but THE SUBURBANITE’s decidedly (sub)urban aesthetic and relatively grounded scenario were much more akin to later comedies than its contemporaries, which typically found humor in exotic or over-the-top locales. The characters, instead, take the focus over the visuals, and deliver the comedy in a way that would at home in vaudeville; the film is a vehicle for the humor, rather than humor being found in something that could only be done on film, i.e. Méliès’, Porter’s, or anyone else’s trick films.
THE SUBURBANITE’s eventually conventional brand of comedy is definitely aligned with Mack Sennet’s sensibilities, who would essentially jumpstart the entire genre in America with Keystone Studios’ founding in 1912. And it came eight years before the start of what I would call the “first wave” of silent film comedy, which is why it lands as the last of my favorites of 1904.
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