In 1912’s, “The Sunbeam,” director David W. Griffith used a new film technique that resembled what was occurring in different locations in an apartment building. Griffith used this technique of showing an action as another was happening. This was difficult to do, considering that motion picture cameras in 1912 were stationary. The fourteen minute film had three main characters: a spinster, a bachelor, and a female child. Throughout the film, events include a tug of war, a mother dying, and romance between the spinster and the bachelor. I would almost go to say this film is a an early romantic comedy with both physical and emotional humor. The audience then and now can understand the “dollhouse” technique that as the spinster walks out her door to the bachelor’s room across the hall, it is in the same building. The female child plays cupid between the bachelor and the spinster. The camera shifts back and forth between what is happening upstairs, with the child’s mother dying, and the ‘building’ romance of the spinster and bachelor. By following the female child in and out doors and up stairs, the audience can easily see the actions of the plot.
In 2008, a Spanish film student did a “variation” of Griffith’s “The Sunbeam” promptly called “Variation:The Sunbeam.” In this variation, the student has six blocks in which to split what was happening room to room and flows throughout the apartment much better than the piecing together of shots in the original film. As Kristen Thompson said in her blog, “The titles appear in the upper right corner of the screen, since no locale opposite the child’s apartment is ever shown. The titles are small and difficult to read, and since they pop up simultaneously with the action, it’s almost impossible to read them anyway. One cannot tell where the titles originally came in the flow of shots, though one can always check the original film.” I agree with her view of the new ‘variation’ film in that, it is more difficult to decipher where the titles go when they pop up at the top, right-hand corner. Anyone that watches “Variation” should watch the original first. I could already tell it would not make much sense just watching the newer film, though it flows better.
In my opinion, I liked the original film more than “Variation.” I am not sure if it is because I watched the original first, but I could understand what was happening in the apartment building without the use of six blocks flowing the scenes together. The assignment almost reminds me of how remakes will never be as good as the original(i.e charlie and chocolate factory and then that weird Tim Burton movie.) I also liked the larger frames in the original. I enjoy watching a film and seeing everything in and around the actors: the landscape, scene layout, backgrounds. It makes for a better movie experience to me.
In Griffith’s earlier work, “A Corner in Wheat,” the landscape is plentiful. The story was obviously about wheat, but it displayed the actual wheat farms and how it was used and sold in a city. “The Sunbeam” was again that of an almost early romantic comedy, while “A Corner in Wheat” has many dimensions and much more characters. “The Sunbeam” was only in one building, but “A Corner in Wheat” showed outside scenes, inside scenes, and even inside a wheat processor where the millionaire died. Basically, the stories are completely different from one another, so it really is not fair to say one is better than the other. That said, those films are more enjoyable then Tim Burton’s remake.