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65 D. W. Griffith, December, 1911 “This is the fifth installment of the multi-year retrospective of all available D. W. Griffith films.” —The Griffith Project, Volume V The translator in her booth is having trouble— Billy’s Stratagem, a Griffith short, came straight from the Nederlands Filmmuseum with all Dutch intertitles. What are clearly pioneers are described, after a long pause, as peasants of new soil. Trappers become peoples who make a living captivating small, fur-bearing mammals. But her translation is no more strange than Griffith’s Indians. The same actors who were dope fiends and repentant alcoholics in November’s films now wear wrinkled skull caps topped with bristly Mohawks, wave shiny axes bought 66 at the local hardware store as they attack the settler’s fort. The settlers live. The Indians don’t. The actors who play them moving on to Griffith’s next December film, A Blot on the ‘Scutcheon, where, with an even-handed splendor, everybody dies— of sword or grief or poison. God forgot me, explains the dying heroine, and I fell. Next to me, a film scholar falls asleep, snoring softly. This is Griffith 388— we have hundreds yet to go. ...

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