eir clothes soaked. They gather round the
fire-plug that is turned on for their benefit, and again become wet as
drowned rats.

Passing through these crowds are George Beban and Clara Williams as The
Italian and his sweetheart. They owe the force of their acting to the
fact that they express each mass of humanity in turn. Their child is
born. It does not flourish. It represents in an acuter way another phase
of the same child-struggle with the heat that the gamins indicate in
their pursuit of the water-cart.

Then a deeper matter. The hero represents in a fashion the adventures of
the whole Italian race coming to America: its natural southern gayety set
in contrast to the drab East Side. The gondolier becomes boot-black. The
grape-gathering peasant girl becomes the suffering slum mother. They are
not specialized characters like Pendennis or Becky Sharp in the Novels of
Thackeray.

Omitting the last episode, the entrance into the house of Corrigan, The
Italian is a strong piece of work.

Another kind of Crowd Picture is The Battle, an old Griffith Biograph,
first issued in 1911, before Griffith's name or that of any actor in
films was advertised. Blanche Sweet is the leading lady, and Charles H.
West the leading man. The psychology of a bevy of village lovers is
conveyed in a lively sweet-hearting dance. Then the boy and his comrades
go forth to war. The lines pass between hand-waving crowds of friends
from the entire neighborhood. These friends give the sense of patriotism
in mass. Then as the consequence of this feeling, as the special agents
to express it, the soldiers are in battle. By the fortunes of war the
onset is unexpectedly near to the house where once was the dance.

The boy is at first a coward. He enters the old familiar door. He appeals
to the girl to hide him, and for the time breaks her heart. He goes forth
a fugitive not only from battle, but from her terrible girlish anger.
But later he rallies. He brings a train of powder wagons through fires
built in his path by the enemy's scouts. He loses every one of his men,
and all but the last wagon, which he drives himself. His return with that
ammunition saves the hard-fought day.

And through all this, glimpses of the battle are given with a splendor
that only Griffith has attained.

Blanche Sweet stands as the representative of the bevy of girls in the
house of the dance, and the whole body social of the village. How the
costumes flash and the handk