The Black Hand
About The Black Hand
In New York's Italian quarter, two men write Angelo the butcher a letter: pay $1,000 or they will blow up the shop and take his daughter Maria. He cannot pay. They kidnap her. Angelo and his wife go to the police. Detectives catch the man who comes for the money, then raid the hideout, arrest the rest, and bring Maria out.
Cast & crew
More about The Black Hand
Wallace McCutcheon directed it for the Biograph Company. The full title is The Black Hand: True Story of a Recent Occurrence in the Italian Quarter of New York. Anthony O'Sullivan and Robert G. Vignola play the extortionists. Biograph released it on 29 March 1906. It runs 11 minutes. The negative is listed at 656 feet.
Themes
In film history
Historians treat it as the earliest surviving gangster film.
Look
Billy Bitzer photographed the butcher shop, the street, and the gang's hideout.
Technique
The scenes are joined by continuity cuts and cross-cutting between the shop and the hideout.
Preservation
A print survives. One copy runs 10 minutes 47 seconds.
Notes
- The picture is eight shots in six scenes, with intertitles between them.
- Copyright was claimed on 24 March 1906, number H74805.
- A timed copy runs 10 minutes 47 seconds.
- Some of the street scenes were shot in New York.
Scenes
- The two men write the threat at a table.
- Police take the collector when he comes for the $1,000.
- Maria is brought out of the hideout.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Black Hand (1906).webm)
