The Other Half

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Retrospective 2020

Donald Trent learned about class equality in the trenches of the Great War, and wants to live by it when he returns home. Instead of joining the upper echelons of his father’s steel mill, he begins at the bottom, as an ordinary worker. His closest chum there is his war buddy, Corporal Jimmy, and Trent's fiancée Katherine becomes friends with Jimmy’s jazz-mad girlfriend Jennie. But after his father’s death, Donald embraces Trent Sr’s admonishment of “no sentiment in business”. He remains obdurate even when Jimmy is blinded in a workplace accident caused by cost-cutting measures. Katherine, however, has stayed true to her ideals. Together with the workers’ newspaper “The Beacon”, she begins a “battle for democracy” as the (only partially surviving) Dutch version of the film was titled … “I believe in the motion picture that carries a message to humanity”, declared King Vidor in 1920. The Other Half reveals King Vidor not just as a director with an impressive command of film technique (cross cutting, dissolves, back lighting), but also as a committed champion of causes. Much like he does in this film, he would later sound the call for social consciousness in An American Romance.

by King Vidor
with Florence Vidor, Charles Meredith, ZaSu Pitts, David Butler, Alfred Allen, Frances Raymond, Hugh Saxon USA 1919 Dutch intertitles 52’ Black/White

With

Florence Vidor
Charles Meredith
ZaSu Pitts
David Butler
Alfred Allen
Frances Raymond
Hugh Saxon

Crew

Director	King Vidor
Screenplay	King Vidor
Story	King Vidor
Cinematography	Ira Morgan
Assistant Director	Roy H. Marshall

Produced by

Brentwood Film Corp.

Additional information

Print: Eye Film Institute Netherlands, Amsterdam

King Vidor

Filmography (selection)

1919 The Turn in the Road; Lost film 1925 The Big Parade (Die große Parade) 1928 The Crowd (Ein Mensch der Masse) 1929 Hallelujah 1934 Our Daily Bread (Der letzte Alarm) 1938 The Citadel 1940 Northwest Passage (Nordwest-Passage) 1947 Duel in the Sun (Duell in der Sonne) 1949 The Fountainhead (Ein Mann wie Sprengstoff) 1956 War and Peace (Krieg und Frieden) 1959 Solomon and Sheba (Salomon und die Königin von Saba)

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2020