A corner in Wheat

Dir: D.W. Griffith/ B&W/ Biograph Co/ USA/ 1909

Corner in Wheat, also based on Frank Norris’s 1901 novel The Octopus and 1903 story A Deal in Wheat, is an allegorical drama in which the humble farmer sows the wheat, the wheat gambler corners the market in this precious commodity, and then the impoverished consumer is forced to pay more for a meager loaf of bread. The cycle continues season after season until some element breaks down. In Griffith’s film, he takes a radical stand and kills off the cavalier wheat gambler in one of the grain elevators. The gambler’s hubris and disregard for the despicable rise in wheat prices is punished when he slips and falls into one of the sorting shafts and is suffocated by the tons of wheat that bury him alive. The next day at dawn on the farm, the farmer suits up and slings his basket of seeds across his back and begins his grueling walk sowing in the fields. Griffith and his cameraman G. W. “Billy” Bitzer even recreated a tableaux vivant of the Jean-François Millet painting The Sower (1850) as the valiant farmer walks his property...



http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/03/15/a-corner-in-wheat

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