A wagon train heading west across the great desert runs out of water, and is attacked by Indians. One man -- their last hope -- is sent out to find water.A wagon train heading west across the great desert runs out of water, and is attacked by Indians. One man -- their last hope -- is sent out to find water.A wagon train heading west across the great desert runs out of water, and is attacked by Indians. One man -- their last hope -- is sent out to find water.
John T. Dillon
- Cavalry Officer
- (as Jack Dillon)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- ConnectionsReferenced in Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies (2008)
Featured review
"For the sake of brotherhood"
The Last Drop of Water is a relatively rare Western from Griffith, coming from a point in his career where all the techniques he would develop were beginning to come together, and yet he was still a little way off the level of perfection he would achieve in his best Biograph shorts the following year.
In this entirely outdoor picture you get to see what Griffith could achieve with background and foreground. In the opening scene he cuts to a different shot when the spurned lover trudges away. This new shot has a very empty, plain background, compared to the busy previous shot. This makes him look isolated, but more importantly it also focuses our attention on the actor. A large and often overlooked part of cinematic craft is how good directors draw our attention to different things through arrangement of the shot, and Griffith was particularly skilled at this.
The focus changes somewhat after this initial scene as the canvas is expanded to the big wagon train. We now get to see Griffith's growing confidence with crowd scenes, and again it's the backgrounds which are worth paying attention to. With his handling of the extras Griffith creates a realistic backdrop for the drama those people aren't just milling around, they are all doing different tasks, and yet they aren't allowed to distract from the more important business in the foreground.
The sequence of Indians attacking a wagon train, after which the cavalry comes to the rescue shows that even in the early 1910s there were certain conventional Western story lines and excuses for action around which another more intimate story could revolve. Funnily enough it is in this attempt to balance the two in a short film that makes The Last Drop of Water fall a bit short. Neither the drama in the desert nor the action of the attack is fully developed. Occasionally intertitles gloss over important points and, while the introductory scene and the conclusion benefit from their succinctness, no part of the main story is given the time it deserves.
In this entirely outdoor picture you get to see what Griffith could achieve with background and foreground. In the opening scene he cuts to a different shot when the spurned lover trudges away. This new shot has a very empty, plain background, compared to the busy previous shot. This makes him look isolated, but more importantly it also focuses our attention on the actor. A large and often overlooked part of cinematic craft is how good directors draw our attention to different things through arrangement of the shot, and Griffith was particularly skilled at this.
The focus changes somewhat after this initial scene as the canvas is expanded to the big wagon train. We now get to see Griffith's growing confidence with crowd scenes, and again it's the backgrounds which are worth paying attention to. With his handling of the extras Griffith creates a realistic backdrop for the drama those people aren't just milling around, they are all doing different tasks, and yet they aren't allowed to distract from the more important business in the foreground.
The sequence of Indians attacking a wagon train, after which the cavalry comes to the rescue shows that even in the early 1910s there were certain conventional Western story lines and excuses for action around which another more intimate story could revolve. Funnily enough it is in this attempt to balance the two in a short film that makes The Last Drop of Water fall a bit short. Neither the drama in the desert nor the action of the attack is fully developed. Occasionally intertitles gloss over important points and, while the introductory scene and the conclusion benefit from their succinctness, no part of the main story is given the time it deserves.
Details
- Runtime18 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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