The Suburbanite
About The Suburbanite
A city family moves into a suburban house looking for quiet. The trials pile up. The wife starts throwing crockery and is arrested.
More about The Suburbanite
Wallace McCutcheon directed for American Mutoscope and Biograph. Frank Marion is credited with the scenario on some lists. A. E. Weed photographed it. The company shot on 21–22 October 1904 in the 14th Street studio and in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Copyright H52864 is dated 11 November 1904. Biograph production number 2975. Kleine Optical handled distribution. Silent Era lists catalog lengths of 664, 692, and 718 feet. It is one of the first Biograph films with intertitles.
Themes
Making
Biograph split the shoot between a New York studio interior and two days in Asbury Park, standing in for the new suburb.
Reviews
Pamela Robertson Wojcik treats the short as a step for film acting: the comics are no longer only figures at the edge of a view.
Look
A. E. Weed shot the studio rooms and the Asbury Park exteriors in October 1904.
Music
Silent. Intertitles, still rare at Biograph in 1904, carry part of the joke.
Preservation
Prints survive as a Library of Congress paper print and in the Museum of Modern Art film archive.
Notes
- John Troiano is the named player.
- Silent Era's keywords for the picture include a moving van, a train, a station, a dog, and a park.
- A paper print is in the Library of Congress. The Museum of Modern Art also holds a print.
- The film is in the public domain in the United States.
Scenes
- The family arrives at the suburban house with the van.
- The wife throws crockery and a policeman takes her away.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Suburbanite (1904).webm)