Popular reviews

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  Review by Rian ★★½ 3

  lol @ the poster

  [Features D. W. Griffith's first acting role - 1 of only 2 performances left in existence, and the bludgeoning to 'death' of a fake baby-kidnapping eagle. Following Electrocuting an Elephant, it leaves me to conclude Edison studios must have had some kind of sick vendetta against animals].

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★½

  Heh... I can't really complain. Despite how silly this is, two factors made me cherish it more than what it probably deserves:

  I. It features D.W. Griffith's first acting role!
  II. The scene of the eagle carrying the baby is way too iconic for my eyes!

  The points above made me forget the over-theatrical acting and the inconsistency in the landscapes. Nice job from the Edison studios, though.

  71/100

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  Review by Kraykay ★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  I want to fly like an eagle
  To the sea
  Fly like an eagle
  Let my spirit carry me
  I want to fly like an eagle
  Till I'm free

  No helicopter parenting here! Lady leaves her wee little infant outside to play. Baby is carried off by an eagle. Serves her right! Lackadaisical tra-la-la attitude. Runs off to find her woodcutter husband and his cronies for help. Woman, you had one job. One.

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  Review by Arjun Anand ★★★★

  Basic cause and effect - tree chopping and eagles revenge, but as Eisenstien professed, American narration structure is an ideological construction that suppress causes in interest of effects; suspence and heroism.

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  Review by TajLV ★★½

  Short. Playing the part of a woodsman, D.W. Griffith saves an infant from the clutches of a marauding eagle. Interesting only for the early use of special effects.

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  Review by Robo Balboa

  You know, we really don’t traumatize children like we used to.

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  Review by Elías José Quintana Duarte ★★½

  Todos alguna vez hemos vimos una escena donde rescatan algun personaje de un nido de aves; esté es el corto que originó todo eso 👌. Historia 6. Dirección 5.

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  Review by anne_f_ ★★★★

  A toddler wanders off and is captured by a passing eagle. A grand rescue has to be undertaken!
  The film is almost comic in the way it portrays the theft of the baby and its rescue,when compared to how it would be depicted now, but must have seemed amazing back in the day. I love these bits of film history.

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  Review by Luke ★★★★½ 1

  High camp melodrama from Biograph: Baby in an eagle's talons! Biograph girl with a gun! D.W. Griffith grapples with wildlife! The close-up of the eagle flying away with the baby really is truly one of the great early film images.

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  Review by Robert Hayes ★★★

  🎶"It's swoopin' by yo' front door, snatchin' yo' babies up..."🎶

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  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★

  There's a tradition of tall tales among American farming and woodland communities which is essentially its own form of literature, and this Edison Studios short is a tribute to that storytelling mode. It's pulled off with a mixture of real rock-climbing stunts (performed by D.W. Griffith!) and incredibly hokey effects, some of which - like the matte paintings - are poetic and attractive. Some of them, like the obvious rope holding the eagle up in a climactic scene, aren't.

  There's nevertheless something winning about the odd, unsettling mix of reality and fakery in the movie's key image, showcased on the poster. It uses a real baby and a fake eagle, which seems like the hard way round until you realise…

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  Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★★½

  Oh, this was a Porter? That explains the one spot where the editing was dodgy; six years later, he's still being overly-careful to make sure people understand that shot B is a continuation of shot A, showing the same action from both camera set-ups. Other than that, it was very crisply staged and organized, and film's potential for creating suspense is *beginning* to blossom.