Year: 1915
Director: Reginald Barker
Country: US
Language: N/A
1915 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the American Civil War. A conflict of great tragedy wherin the Northern Union fought the Southern Confederacy over many issues, the most important being slavery. It is the bloodiest war in US history, leaving 750.000 casualties in its wake. The anniversary of the conflict meant much romanticizing on the silver screen. Among other films D.W Griffith had his racist Birth of a Nation, while Reginald Barker had the pro-confederate The Coward.
Keenan stars as a Virginia colonel and Charles Ray as his weak-willed son. The son is forced, at gunpoint, by his father to enlist in the Confederate States Army. He is terrified by the war and deserts during a battle.
It's unfortunate that most film buffs don't know who Charles Ray was. He is a forgotten film star who enlivened his shallow twerps and rubes with a degree of emotional nuance that had been unseen among male leads of his era. Sure Barrymore and Chaney excelled at grand emotion, making every gesture as big as it possibly could be, but Ray avoided exaggeration. He was a master at making us feel while seemingly doing very little.
The Coward, unlike Birth of a Nation, doesn't really feel like a love letter to the old ways of the South. It feels more politically neutral, as if it was meant to be enjoyed by both the North and the South. The film is also more palatable as it isn't so overtly racist, rather the colored folk are given quite a bit of dignity compared to most films made at the time.
Still, it doesn't help that the black folk are just white actors in blackface. Also the paternalistic slave/master relationship, while not as demeaning as painting black people to be monsters, is still pretty low-brow. Despite it being technically well made for the time, much of it is quite dated and thus it can be difficult to enjoy.
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