User Reviews

This brief film, rather poorly lit and with exaggerated acting, is (I'm assuming) a fair example of a pre-Griffith Biograph. On a limited budget, the production team has created a sparse and crowded set, and the actors have presumably supplied their own clothes. The action is very controlled and the gestures overly indicative.

I find 'A Ballroom Tragedy' interesting because it seems to have been made as though the audience knows exactly who is who and where they are. Which leads me to two conclusions. The first is that this is a sequence from a popular stage play or novel, or it was a news incident that was prominent at the time. Therefor the audience would know enough to follow the story without having to have it placed in too much context.

Not a bad film overall, however flawed you may find it. Period fashion fanatics should take note. It can be downloaded from the Library of Congress website.

Filmed June 14, 1905, in the Biograph New York City studio, The Ballroom Tragedy touches on an issues apparent in many movies seen today...jealousy & murder.

The film could have used better lighting as some areas of the film are dark. Average film overall.

5* (10* Rating System)

A man and a woman, both in evening dress, sit on a couch, while another woman sneaks up behind them. As the couple on the couch begin to neck passionately, the second woman plunges a knife into the first's back. As one woman falls dead, the other makes her escape.

In this brief scene shot by Billy Bitzer for Biograph, we are presented with an entire story of sexual betrayal and revenge. The audience can infer the entire course of events from less than a minute of screen time. It's a startlingly effective bit of story-telling that draws in the viewer, forcing him or her to come up with the entire matter: emotions, planning, and even what happens afterwards... according to the sentiments of audience.

A Ballroom Tragedy (1905)

A man takes a woman into a room where they sit on a couch and become quite comfortable with each other. While they're chatting another woman sneak in and watches them. Within seconds she takes a knife and jams it into the woman's back. Without any title cards or anything it's somewhat hard to figure out exactly what the plot is. Is the woman with the knife the man's wife? Is the woman with the knife a jealous girlfriend? Either way, the film is way too over-dramatic as are the performances but at the same time I liked it. I liked how everything was set up and especially the way the woman with the knife hides and just waits for the perfect strike.

Well, this genre is Crime, but i thought that in the early 1900s, the films would have soft, not harsh, violence and of course, i thought that films in the early 1900s would be only stage performances.

But, still, i still like the early form of crime and action scenes that were filmed in the early 1900s. Well, of course, back in the Greek times, when they were acting out, they did some skits with murdering. but, all I am freaking saying is that this is like the early action and crime scenes ever filmed in the early silent movie era. I also like the action of the husband of the woman who got stabbed, escaped and did so much work in the early film by doing so much action.

10/10

As is the case with most early films, I am not assigning a score to this one since the film is so short. This is true of all films from this time and with so little to go on, scores are very problematic. However, if I did score this one, it would be pretty low.

The scene is a fancy party. A man meets a woman and they sit and talk. They appear to be very chummy with each other--and the man's girlfriend who sees this thinks so as well. So, like a blind thief, she sneaks up on them, pulls out a dagger and stabs the other woman to death! It's all utterly ridiculous but it's made even worse by the dying woman's overacting. This was meant to be a serious tragedy but I could help laughing because it's so poorly made and rushed. Not a shining moment in the history of film!