The Coffin Ship is a 1911 American silent adventure film, a nautical melodrama produced by the Thanhouser Company of New Rochelle, New York. Featuring William Garwood in a starring role, the identities of the motion picture's other two principal cast members remain undetermined.
A full print of the film, one distributed in Europe in 1911 with German intertitles and titled Im Meere Verloren ("Lost in the Sea"), is preserved in the collection of the EYE Film Institute in the Netherlands.Im Meere Verloren [German title for The Coffin Ship (1911)], uploaded by "EYE Filmmuseum" c. 2016. Accessed via YouTube, April 15, 2023.
Plot A basic description of the film's storyline is provided in a review of this Thanhouser release in the June 24, 1911 issue of the entertainment publication The Billboard:
Cast William Garwood as Jack, the ship's captain ("Georg" and "George" in the German release) Mary, Jack's love interest (actress undetermined) Sir Gorden, shipowner and Mary's father (actor undetermined)
Production The production's interior scenes were filmed at Thanhouser's New York studio in New Rochelle, at the corner of Grove and Warren streets.Bowers, Q. David. "Chapter 3 (1910): Spying on Thanhouser", Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, extensive online database on history and films of Thanhouser Company. Retrieved April 17, 2023. The scenes of wharves, ship-repair yards, and voyage scenes were filmed on location at the town's nearby harbor on Long Island Sound As was common practice in the early silent era, interior scenes were usually filmed outdoors, utilizing three-sided, open-air sets with no ceilings to take advantage of full sunlight. Later, to more effectively control filming conditions but still have natural lighting, film companies, including Thanhouser, built glass-enclosed studios for their sets."Silent Film Set", view of an interior set shot outdoors (c. 1915) and information about filming in the early silent era, photographic collection of the Los Angeles Public Library. Retrieved via the research "gateway" of CaliSphere, University of California, April 17, 2023.Keating, Patrick. "Part I: Lighting in the Silent Period", Hollywood Lighting From the Silent Era to Film Noir. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010, pp. 15-104. Such outdoor filming of interior scenes is quite evident in The Coffin Ship. In one of the film's early "indoor" scenesapproximately three minutes and thirty seconds into the filmMary is shown standing alone in the parlor of her father's home, when strong winds cause the covers and pages of magazines on a table to blow open and turn rapidly, while fabric draped along the fireplace's mantel is also buffeted by the winds and flutters unnaturally in an "indoor" environment. In the same scene, as Mary prepares to leave the house, she simulates extinguishing the oil lamp on the table and the room gets noticeably darker, despite the setting being filmed outdoors. This effect was likely created by an assistant to the camera operator, who simply lowered a filter in front of the camera's lens.
Surviving German copy of film A filmstock copy of The Coffin Ship with a German title and intertitles is preserved in the Jean Desmet Collection of the EYE Institute in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Released in Germany in 1911 under the title Im Meere Verloren ("Lost in the Sea"), that copy and details about the one-reeler are not generally accessible, as of 2023, on EYE's main online database. A digital copy of the film, however, is provided for viewing by EYE on the streaming service YouTube.
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