The Cry of the Children
About The Cry of the Children
Alice, a mill child played by Marie Eline, works beside her mother and father. Ethel Wright is the mother. James Cruze is the father. The story is built on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem about children in the mills. Intertitles set Browning’s lines in quotation marks and give them no speaker. The reel cuts in footage of children actually working in a large textile factory.
Cast & crew
More about The Cry of the Children
George Nichols directed for Thanhouser. Carl Louis Gregory photographed. Released 30 April 1912. Two reels, 2,000 feet, about 29 minutes on the original print. Lila Chester and William Russell are also billed. In 2011 the Library of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry.
Themes
Background
Child labor in textile mills was still legal in much of the United States in 1912. Thanhouser put a working floor into a two-reel drama and quoted Browning over it.
Making
Nichols uses a Thanhouser story and then a real mill floor. Gregory’s camera is what made the 1912 argument: audiences could see working children, not only actors playing them.
Look
Carl Louis Gregory shot the story scenes and the inserts of children at work inside a textile factory.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A print survives and was named to the National Film Registry in 2011.
Notes
- The factory shots are the reason the release was argued over. They are not a staged mill set.
- The poem’s words sit in the titles inside quotation marks.
- The National Film Registry citation, 2011, calls the short culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
- A Commons copy names Nichols, Browning, and Thanhouser in the filename.
Awards
- National Film Registry (2011)
Scenes
- The story cuts from the mill family to children working on a real factory floor, under Browning’s quoted lines.
Influenced by
- The Cry of the Children (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Cry of the Children 1912 George Nichols Elizabeth Barrett Browning Edwin Thanhouser.webm)
