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9 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :- A Biblical-like Parable Of Greed, 2 May 2008 Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
While others see this in a political light, the first thing that came to my mind watching this silent film was the Biblical parable about the man - to paraphrase - who wanted all his barns full and to be rich above all else, but not realizing it wouldn't do him any good if died the next day, which he did.Here, in this short story, we see a man who wants to corner the entire wheat market, and does so making him an incredibly wealthy man. However, moments after he hears the good news about how much money he's worth, he slips and falls into a grain elevator with that grain suffocating him.In addition, we see the poor people suffering because they can't afford a loaf of bread, thanks to the greedy people like this guy (and others). We also see the same opening and closing scene, indicating to me that Griffith thought the best way to make a living is to work at it, and do things the right way even if it takes awhile.
6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :- A Corner in Cinema, 1 June 2008 Author: nora_nettlerash from Ruritania
A Corner in Wheat is one of the five or six really outstanding Biograph shorts. Here, DW Griffith draws together all the techniques he had been perfecting over his last year in the motion picture business – moving actors in depth for maximum effect, restrained, realistic performances, a consistent tempo, succinct, unobtrusive intertitles, atmosphere conveyed through setting, and the varied possibilities of the editing process.What is most obvious here is the development that Griffith is probably best known for, which is his cross-cutting. He had already explored cross-cutting for excitement or suspense, and even to compare events going on in completely separate locations, but here he is cutting between seemingly separate narratives which, when put together tell one coherent story. He is perhaps the first filmmaker to show social cause and effect on such a grand scale.There are plenty of other nice touches along the way. Particularly memorable are the shots of the farm family, with the wind pulling at their clothing, and the stark trees and barren landscape mirroring their situation. But what is perhaps the greatest sign of competence here is the way these images give a sense of unity to the whole, with the desolate farm scenes book-ending the short. It's this development of structure that was perhaps Griffith's most important contribution.A Corner in Wheat is not quite perfect though. In particular, the acting performances are not amazing, and one crowd shot is simply a chaotic mess. Griffith's handling of a cast would improve in the years to come, not to mention the fact that he would later work with some of the brightest stars of the era.
7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :- Griffith: Parallels, 11 August 2004 Author: Cineanalyst
(Note: This is the first of three short films by D.W. Griffith that I care to highlight by commenting on them. The others are 'The Girl and Her Trust' and 'The Battle at Elderbush Gulch.')D.W. Griffith usually made only three types of films: melodramas, social commentary and suspense (usually either battle scenes or the last-minute rescue, or both). His features often contain all three genres. His films were often set during the Victorian age or the Civil War era, or some other turning point in American history. His films of modern setting drip of Victorian sentiments. Mostly, his films were theatrical (the stories, interior shots and acting, most consistently). Griffith's films are categorical because he, apparently, rarely used scripts and was the rare studio director that interacted with the scenarists, and thus invented the role of studio director.'A Corner in Wheat' is simple: it is social commentary. Based on a Frank Norris story, the anti-monopoly narrative fits with a recurrent theme of Griffith's films--sympathy for the poor. (It's rather hypocritical, however, considering that Griffith worked for a member of the Motion Picture Patents Company.) The story, albeit better than its contemporaries, is not of much interest, or, rather, is not why I highlighted this short film.In 1903, Edwin S. Porter crosscut scenes out of temporal order in 'The Great Train Robbery.' Parallel-action crosscutting as dissection of a scene with spatially separate actions appeared as early as 1907 in Pathé and Vitagraph films. The crosscutting in 'A Corner in Wheat' is exceptional because it functions as contrast between the wheat magnate's dinner party and the wheat farmers not being able to afford bread at a market. I'm not sure who helped Griffith with the editing, but it was probably James Smith, as usual. The parallel editing is appropriately slow paced, so again in the comeuppance dénouement. As well, the final shot was a good attempt at poignancy. The rest of the photoplay, especially the camera positioning, is primitive.
5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :- Significant early propaganda, 2 February 2007 Author: Ron in LA from United States
Populist/Progressive propaganda directed by D. W. Griffith about a wealthy commodities speculator who is indifferent to the suffering caused by the price distortions following his monopolization of wheat. Comments of the other reviewers are a bit harsh, its only a 14-minute film so it can only do so much in the way of character development or plot. While it is creepy to see Griffith outflank later Communist propaganda to the left, you still have to admire the cinematic achievement. Griffith is using a comparative editing technique generally attributed to Eisenstein, but sixteen years before Eisenstein's first film, so the short is a must-see for cinema students for that reason alone. For the rest of us, it is an engaging fourteen minutes that delivers powerful images, notwithstanding its questionable footing in economic theory.
5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :- Some Good Techniques For Its Time, 18 September 2001 Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio
For the cinematic limitations of its time, there are some good techniques in this short drama. The story, which is about a ruthless man trying to control the wheat market, is interesting though often heavy-handed - but it's the way it is filmed that makes it of interest. The actual story is preceded by a look at farmers growing wheat, and it includes a nicely planned shot of the sowers going back and forth, in a way that cleverly gets around the fixed camera limitations of the time. The main story shows good technique as well, using well-conceived cross-cutting to emphasize the differences between the world of those who rely on the wheat and the world of those who profit from it. It has an effective closing shot, too. It's pretty good drama and an interesting example of how these very old films were made.
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- The rich get richer..., 14 September 2008 Author: ackstasis from Australia
I don't think many would dispute the assertion that D.W. Griffith was the first great American director, and his commercial and critical success during the 1910s was simply unsurpassed. But all geniuses have to start somewhere. Between 1908 and 1913, Griffith worked for the Biograph Company, producing short films at a rate of two or three per week, regularly experimenting with and pioneering simple new cinematic techniques that would eventually become commonplace. Even throughout a single year , it's been interesting to trace a gradual development in Griffith's skills as a director. 'Those Awful Hats (1909),' was a basic, one-take comic farce; this gave way to 'The Sealed Room (1909),' a melodramatic thriller that made good use of cross-cutting; and then 'The Red Man's View (1909),' which inspired pathos for the plight of the Native American tribes. 'A Corner in Wheat (1909)' is the best Griffith short I've seen to date, a genuinely-touching slice of Americana that establishes the director as a champion for the typical hard-working American {despite the fact that Griffith would later become exceedingly wealthy}.It's impossible not to think about John Ford's 'The Grapes of Wrath (1940)' while watching this film. That families of anonymous farmers are left to starve, with little hope for the future, as a greedy businessman accumulates millions of dollars that he'll never use, is an idea fundamentally Steinbeckian in its conception, and Ford would undoubtedly derive inspiration from Griffith's work as he developed his own career. The story concerns a cunning tycoon, the Wheat King (Frank Powell), who manages to capture a monopoly in the wheat market, restricting product supply and so pushing up the price. I don't think that it was Griffith's intention to vilify the Wheat King – his business actions are certainly condemning thousands of poor families to starvation, but I don't think he realises this; he's so obsessed with money that he is blind to the plight of the ordinary American. Perhaps this was Griffith's purpose for producing the film, to inform such businessmen of the consequences of their selfish actions. This is a relatively simplistic moral by today's standards, but it works.To highlight the old adage that "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer," Griffith utilises cross-cutting to perfect effect. His pioneering use of parallel editing – cutting back and forth between two scenarios that contrast each other – was a further step towards the realisation of editing's ability to affect emotion. As the Wheat King celebrates extravagantly with his colleagues, Griffith cuts to the lines of poor farmers and their families, who, unable to afford the inflated bread prices, are resigned to going hungry. Some might consider this a primitive editing technique, but even modern directors use it extensively – for example, I recently noticed a sequence of uncannily-similar shots in Ridley Scott's 'American Gangster (2007).' Even though the selfish monopolist businessman ultimately meets his demise, ironically, via the tonnes of wheat he had been hoarding, his death does nothing to brighten the prospects of his faceless victims. Griffith's final shot is heartbreaking, as a lone farmer fruitlessly drops seeds in the dry, desolate dust of his property. There seems to be little hope for this man's future, but he keeps trying, and that's hope enough.
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- Cornering the Market, 19 August 2007 Author: wesconnorsehny from Earth
Early film of "social relevance" directed by D.W. Griffith. It's a little difficult to follow - apparently, Mr. Griffith is showing the contrast between the wealthy "Wheat King" (played by Frank Powell) and the poor "Farmer" (played by James Kirkwood). The farmer does the manual work, laboring in the fields. The wealth businessman reaps the profits, in luxury. In the film, Mr. Powell's character becomes more and more greedy, making the price of goods so high the poor farmers can't afford the goods they helped create. Of the supporting players, Henry B. Walthall is most impressive as Kirkwood's associate. Griffith mixes location and set nicely. Watch the wicked "Wheat King" meet a pitiful, ironic end in the "Corner in Wheat". ****** A Corner in Wheat (12/13/09) D.W. Griffith ~ Frank Powell, James Kirkwood, Henry B. Walthall
3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :- Just Desserts, 9 November 2003 Author: MrCritical1 from Toronto, Canada
A Corner in Wheat is a little meditation on capitalism, derived from Frank Norris, weaving together narrative fragments linked by their relation to wheat. The film begins with farmers sowing grain and taking their meager harvest to market. Capitalist speculators engineer the "corner in wheat" of the title, establishing full control over the world's supply. We see, intercut with this coup and the main capitalist's ensuing celebrations, the effects on others: another speculator is ruined, the farmers return home empty-handed, the urban poor go hungry and begin to riot when bread becomes unaffordable. The riot is squelched, but the "Wheat King" meets with his just desserts, inadvertently buried under an avalanche of grain, while the farmers continue to toil.7* (10* Rating System)
2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :- Griffith, 29 February 2008 Author: Michael_Elliott from Louisville, KY
Corner in Wheat, A (1909) *** 1/2 (out of 4) One of D.W. Griffith's best shorts. This one deals with an evil tycoon who makes the price of wheat go up for his own profit but by doing this is causes the poor to suffer. Here's another film where Griffith takes out his anger of being poor and he hits all the right notes making this a high energy and downright dirty tale. The way Griffith shows the poor is wonderfully done and the ending is great as well. Of historical importance, this was the first film to get reviewed in a NY newspaper, which also makes the historians believe that this was the first film reviewed anywhere in the world. Films were discussed in papers before this one but this was the first to actually get its own review.
3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :- A Powerful Ending, 11 September 2001 Author: (caspian1978@hotmail.com) from Attleboro, MA
Even if you miss the first minutes of this film, don't miss the very last. A Corner in Wheat comes off as a comical drama that seems to lead nowhere. That is until the very end when we see a powerful image end the film to give the audience a message to take with them. The final shot is a man plants wheat in his fields in hope of a better life. A simple shot, a simple movement, a giant message!
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