The Switch Tower (1913) Online

"The Switch Tower" (called "The Switchtower" on the actual title to the movie) is a very good film from the Biograph Studio. It tells a story well and is quite well done for 1912 (imdb says 1913).

The story begins with the father going to work at the railroad. He's a switchman--a guy whose job it is to turn the switches to route trains to various tracks. However, when his wife is accosted by evil hobos and runs to cover in a nearby shack, she happens upon a group of evil counterfeiters (led by a young Lionel Barrymore). When the husband sees this, he runs to the rescue but it captured. With no one to throw the switches, it's up to his little boy to do the job. The resourceful kid does but that isn't all....

This film features an interesting story that is told economically and well for the time. Worth seeing if you are a fan of early cinema.

This is a Biograph one-reeler that was not directed by Griffith, but it hardly seems to matter as his stock company and Billy Bitzer are on hand to give the production that Griffith feel. And this one is fun -- as an ornery little kid, through luck and pluck, manages to save his Mom and his Dad from a deadly bunch of counterfeiters, and in the meantime, keep the trains on his Dad's railroad running on the right track.

If those old melodramas from 1912 had been like this, the genre would not have faded away. Modern filmmakers could learn a lot just from this one reeler on how to tell (and sell) a story quickly, and still incorporate a lot of action.

Worth seeing -- it's not stodgy in the least.