A Corner in Wheat
About A Corner in Wheat
A tycoon corners wheat. Bread doubles in price. Farmers and the poor line up while he gives a banquet. At his grain elevator he falls into the shaft. Wheat pours in and buries him. They pull the body out too late. The sowing and the bread line go on.
Cast & crew
More about A Corner in Wheat
D. W. Griffith directed. He and Frank E. Woods adapted Frank Norris's novel The Pit and the story "A Deal in Wheat." G. W. Bitzer photographed. James Smith edited. Biograph released it on December 13, 1909. Frank Powell, Grace Henderson, James Kirkwood, Linda Arvidson, W. Chrystie Miller, Gladys Egan, Blanche Sweet, and Henry B. Walthall are billed. Six months earlier James A. Patten had cornered wheat, and in some cities bread went from five cents to ten.
Themes
Look
Bitzer cuts the wheat field, the bakery queue, and the elevator shaft against one another.
Preservation
Prints survive. The Library of Congress named it to the National Film Registry in 1994.
Notes
- The banquet is cut against the bread line.
- The king dies in his own elevator, under the grain.
- Griffith and Woods used two Norris texts, not one.
- Selected for the National Film Registry in 1994.
- A copy is on the Internet Archive as CornerInWheat.
Awards
- National Film Registry (1994)
Scenes
- Guests dine while people wait for bread.
- Grain pours over the man in the elevator pit.
Influenced by
- Frank Norris's The Pit
- Frank Norris's "A Deal in Wheat
Also available
- Internet Archive (CornerInWheat)
