An Unseen Enemy
About An Unseen Enemy
A doctor dies and leaves two daughters and a small estate. Their brother, Elmer Booth, brings cash home too late for the bank and locks it in the safe. The maid, Grace Henderson, sees him do it. She cannot open the safe, calls in a thief, Harry Carey, and they shut the sisters in the next room. Through a stove-pipe hole she aims a pistol she cannot sight, trying to keep them off the telephone. The older girl has dropped the receiver. The shots themselves bring the brother back with help.
Cast & crew
More about An Unseen Enemy
D. W. Griffith directed. Edward Acker wrote the screenplay. G. W. Bitzer photographed. Biograph produced it. General Film Company distributed it on 9 September 1912. One reel, listed at 15 to 16 minutes. A circulating copy runs 15 minutes 17 seconds. Lillian Gish is the older sister, Dorothy Gish the younger. Robert Harron is the younger sister's boyfriend. Walter Miller is the brother's friend. The actors are not named on the film itself. The chase at the end was not shot in Fort Lee. It starts in Little Silver and ends in Oceanport, across the Goose Neck Bridge.
Themes
Making
Griffith shot the house scenes around Biograph's Fort Lee base and sent the car chase out to the Jersey shore towns linked by the Goose Neck Bridge.
Reviews
The 21 September 1912 Moving Picture World said the aim was dread, put two girls in a locked room, and found them "charming; they are not yet actresses, but in a good place to learn acting." The same notice said the photography in many scenes was not up to Biograph's standard.
Look
G. W. Bitzer photographed the locked room and the hole in the wall, then the car run from Little Silver to Oceanport.
Music
The 1912 release is silent. Robert Israel later composed a score used in presentations of the short.
Preservation
AFI lists the film as extant. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- AFI calls it the Gish sisters' film debut. Dorothy was fourteen and Lillian eighteen.
- Moving Picture World reviewed it on 21 September 1912 under the title The Unseen Enemy.
- Robert Israel later wrote a score for a presentation of the short.
Scenes
- The maid pushes a pistol through the stove-pipe hole and cannot see to aim.
- The dropped telephone carries the sound of the shots to the brother.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (An Unseen Enemy (1912).webm)
