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The Bigger Man

Alternate Title: The Bridge, Or the Bigger Man Director: John W. Noble (Dir) Release Date: 20 Sep 1915 Duration (in reels): 5			Print this page Display Movie Summary

Cast:	Henry Kolker	(John Stoddard)
	Renee Kelly	(Janet Van Nest)
	Orlando Daly	(Courtlandt Van Nest)
	Elsie Balfour	(Edith Stoddard)
	J. H. Goldsworthy	(Kenneth Stuyvesant)
	Mayme Kelso	(Aunt Sarah)
	Edwin Boring	(Lavinsky)
	Richard Lee	(Sevic)

Summary:

In a prologue, the relationship between capital and labor throughout history is shown in caveman days, Biblical times, and the feudal period. In the main story John Stoddard, a construction chief building a gigantic bridge for capitalist Courtlandt Van Nest, sympathizes with the workers' dissatisfaction with low salaries and subsistence conditions. When his attempts to negotiate with Van Nest fail, the workers, led by agitator Lavinsky, prepare to strike. Van Nest's daughter Janet, who is engaged to a militia captain, visits the site and is appalled by the squalor. Despite their differences, Janet and Stoddard fall in love. When the strike breaks, Van Nest sends in the militia. As they prepare to fire, Stoddard sees Lavinsky about to throw dynamite, and wrestles it away. He then agrees to Van Nest's demand for settling the strike that he refrain from seeing Janet. After Janet leaves home to help poor families, Van Nest looks for her at Stoddard's house where Stoddard demonstrates that because of their similar ancestry, he and Van Nest are not very different. When Stoddard's sister Edith allows Van Nest to witness the surprise reunion of a worker and his wife from Europe, to whom Janet had sent transportation money, Van Nest softens and agrees to Janet's marriage to Stoddard. An epilogue follows showing blindfolded Justice saying to fat Capital and burly Labor, "Why quarrel? You are worthless without the other."

Production Company:	Rolfe Photoplays, Inc.
Distribution Company:	Metro Pictures Corp.
Director:	John W. Noble	(Dir)
Photography:	Herbert Oswald Carleton	(Cam)
Country:	United States

Source Text:	Based on the play The Bridge by Rupert Hughes (New York, 4 Sep 1909).
Authors:	Rupert Hughes

Copyright Claimant	Copyright Date	Copyright Number
Metro Pictures Corp.	20/9/1915 dd/mm/yyyy	LP6784

Physical Properties:	b&w;:
	Si:


Genre:	Drama
Sub-Genre:	Social

Subjects (Major):	Capitalism
	Construction workers
	Employer-employee relations
	Fathers and daughters
	Humanitarianism
	Strikes

Subjects (Minor):	Bridges
	Dynamite
	Labor agitators
	Labor violence
	United States. National Guard

Note:	The copyright descriptions and an ad for this film list its title as The Bridge, or the Bigger Man . One review calls it The Better Man . Two reviewers commented on the use of dissolves between different scenes, which was confusing to them, and apparently uncommon for the time. One reviewer noted that director John W. Noble's films could be distinguished by his use of dissolves.

Bibliographic Sources:	Date	Page
Motog	2 Oct 15	p. 694, 712
MPN	9 Oct 15	p. 85.
MPW	25 Sep 15	p. 2250, 2252
MPW	4 Sep 15	p. 475, 500
Variety	8 Oct 15	p. 23.

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The American Film Institute is grateful to Sir Paul Getty KBE and the Sir Paul Getty KBE Estate for their dedication to the art of the moving image and their support for the AFI Catalog of Feature Films and without whose support AFI would not have been able to achieve this historical landmark in this epic scholarly endeavor.

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