Blind Justice (1916)
Directed by Benjamin Christensen

Film Review

Director Benjamin Christensen followed his noteworthy debut feature The Mysterious X (a.k.a. Sealed Orders) (1914) with this similarly well-crafted thriller, one that feels eerily ahead of its time and is an obvious precursor to the modern suspense-horror film. Originally released in Christensen's native Denmark as Hævnens nat, Blind Justice abounds with Hitchcockian tropes and surpasses virtually every other crime melodrama of its time, including those immensely popular crime serials by Louis Feuillade which it vaguely resembles in a few scenes.   Today, Christensen's reputation rests mainly on his subsequent Häxan, Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922), one of the most inspired and idiosyncratic films of the silent era, but his earlier films are just as worthy of acclaim and it is a tragedy that the director was unable to build on this early promise after his move to UFA and then Hollywood in the mid-1920s.  Anyone who has watched Christensen's first three films could easily make a case for ranking him alongside those cinematic titans D.W. Griffith and Abel Gance, but were it not for Häxan, his greatest accomplishment, his name would long since have been lost to posterity.

Blind Justice takes a penny dreadful scenario that would have been familiar to devotees of the Perils of Pauline (1914) serial and develops it into a full-blown psychological melodrama-cum-thriller that is as sophisticated on the narrative front as it is with its use of cinematic visuals.  The characters are more fully developed than you could ever hope to find in your average film thriller of this époque and this allows the contrived plot to attain some measure of plausibility (even if it goes slightly off the rails towards the end).  The film is also an effective piece of social satire, condemning society's willingness to judge others and allow prejudice to triumph over compassion.  The central theme, that things are seldom how they seem, is sarcastically underlined in a scene in which a baby in its crib is revealed to have a monkey's face.  The shock is momentary but deeply felt and lingers even when the camera retracts to reveal that what we have in fact witnessed is merely a puppet show put on by two doting parents for the amusement of their children.

This mischievous aside is a wry echo of the first shocker that Christensen subjects us to near the start of his film.  Realising she is trapped in her bedroom, the heroine can only watch in excruciating terror as something heads towards her.  The camera slowly pulls back from her visibly terrified form, miraculously dissolving through a latticed window so that she now appears trapped, entirely at the mercy of the shadowy form that is about to clamber through the window, a night fiend intent on devouring its next prey.  The feeling of confinement and abject terror is palpable and brilliantly sustained, not doubt influencing Murnau for his vampire offering Nosferatu (1922) and just about every other director in the horror genre since.  As in the puppet show, the fear is quickly shown to be unjustified.  Like the heroine, we have allowed our imagination to run away with itself.  It is only in the film's dramatic final reel that the threat acquires substance, but by this time what could justifiably have been a descent into slasher-style excess more resembles Greek tragedy, for now we see things from both perspectives - the heroine almost welcoming retribution for her betrayal of an innocent man, and the persecuted victim driven to revenge by a truly terrible sequence of events.

It is startling how strongly Blind Justice foreshadows subsequent horror films, in particular James Whale's Frankenstein (1931).  In place of the physically deformed monstrosity we have a man of powerful physique (a circus strongman sympathetically played by Benjamin Christensen himself) who has the misfortune of being wrongly convicted of a crime he did not commit (just one of many Hitchcockian associations the film offers).  As a convicted criminal, the protagonist becomes persona non grata and then a murderous fiend - he is indeed judged blindly by a society that needs easy scapegoats to maintain the illusion of order and respectability.  In the film's most poignant scene, the former strongman, now reduced to a pathetic wreck of a man after realising that his son is lost forever, is befriended by a child in a park.  It is a scene that is reminiscent of the one in Frankenstein where the Monster makes friends with a little girl.  Both scenes end in disaster, with the protagonist realising that his estrangement from humanity is total and irreversible.  The timeless moral is the one that underpins Mary Shelley's gothic novel.  Society creates the monster that is formed from the thing it rejects.

Although it is quite a substantial piece for its time (it runs to just over 100 minutes), Blind Justice wastes not a second and runs through its sequence of interweaving plots at a brisk pace without ever seeming to tread water or become muddled.  In purely narrative terms, the film is ahead of its time, but what sets it apart is its confident and effective use of various cinematic techniques which were only just being developed but which have since become an essential part of the language of cinema.  Christensen's shot composition (note the immaculate and deliberate framings) and use of cross-cutting add much to the film's relentless pace and oppressive mood.  Superimposition, camera movement and flashbacks are used to reveal the mental states of the characters, predating the French impressionists by almost a decade.  The camera is not a static viewing instrument - it acquires a character of its own, providing a subjective viewpoint that cannot be relied upon to show us the truth.  That we are meant to be voyeurs is stressed in the sequence where we are forced to peep through a keyhole - we almost relish the heroine's descent into terror, anticipating the violent encounter that is assuredly wending its way towards us.

By the film's thrilling climax, in which atonement, revenge and desperate rescue thrash it out in a bubbling cauldron of melodramatic excess, Christensen ekes out as much tension as he can as the drama surges towards its nail-blinding conclusion.  Shock tactics are used with gay abandon, gratifying our lust for the ludicrously sensational.  In one shot, the vindictive protagonist suddenly appears at a window pane (a device that would become a trademark of Mario Brava in such films as Black Sabbath (1963)).  In another, the same would-be killer rushes in from the side of the frame to attack the unwary heroine - a cheap but effective 'knock 'em out of their seats' tactic used by Hitchcock in Psycho (1960), John Carpenter in Halloween (1978) and countless other directors since.  With the heroine now well and truly tied to the railway tracks (metaphorically speaking), the action cuts back and forth between her and her rescuers, who exercise every ounce of ingenuity to get themselves out of their own dire predicament.  Everything plays out with mechanical predictability but Christensen keeps us hooked and delivers a denouement every bit as tense and exciting as anything you will find in today's Hollywood action blockbusters.

Film Synopsis

A party of friends gather at a large country house to welcome in the New Year, not knowing that an escaped convict, John Sikes, is prowling in the vicinity.  Entering the house, Sikes, a former circus strongman, appeals to one of the guests, Ann, to provide him with milk for his baby son.  Ann is forced to betray the convict and as he is dragged away Sikes swears he will one day return to punish Ann for her unfeeling treachery.  Fourteen years go by and Ann is now happily married to a doctor, Richard West.  A reformed character, Sikes is released from prison and immediately sets about looking for his son Robert.  On hearing that Robert was given up for adoption to an unknown benefactor Sikes is heartbroken.  He falls in with a gang of thieves led by the odious Slim Sam Morton.  Whilst selling a stolen dog to Dr West, one of Morton's criminal associates purloins the keys belonging to his country residence.  As Morton's gang raids West's house, Sikes comes across a jewellery box belonging to Ann.  In his confused state of mind his desire for revenge overwhelms him.  His one thought is to kill the woman who ruined his life...