Revenge

Description

1904, 5.42 minutes
Description:
Copy of a recently identified William Haggar film made from a paper print held by the Library of Congress. It is the tragic tale of a man (played by William Haggar Jnr.) badly served by the local mental asylum warders and, in particular, by the chief warder who deprives him of both his wife and his daughter. He gets his revenge but will pay dearly for it. The role of the wife would usually have been played by William Haggar Jnr.'s wife, Jenny Lindon, but she was out of action at the time as she was expecting her first son Billy (born September 1904). The young daughter in the film is very probably Will and Jenny's eldest daughter Jennie (who played Gwenny in 'The Maid of Cefn Ydfa'). The other parts will have been taken by members of Will's theatrical company. On completion, the film was exported to the USA and France.
Synopsis:
The warder is welcomed into the house by the wife. They shoo the wife's daughter away so that they can indulge their adulterous passion. Home comes the wife's husband, carrying his shotgun and wearing a good suit - he is a bailiff? a farmer? a country gentleman?. He discovers his wife happily ensconced in the arms of the chief warder. Angry, he punches the warder and sets about his wife only to be overcome by the sight of his daughter, who has re-entered the room. Other warders arrive and the man is arrested. He is next seen escaping via a bed sheet rope from an upstairs room (his good suit gone - he is dressed only in asylum issue clothes) but with the warders following after him. He enters his home, is embraced by his sad daughter and runs off with her in his arms. His wife enters the room, sees what has happened and calls the warders in to follow her husband. Out now in the fields, the husband lays down his daughter by a hedge in order to take on the warders. It is an unfair fight - five to one and one of the five, the chief, has a gun which he fires off, killing the daughter who has run in to the fray to try and help her father. O, dreadful day. But the chief warder with the gun has no compassion for the father and orders him to be dragged away. The wife runs up and a stunned warder points out the trigger-happy chief warder to her. She wrestles with the villain - once her lover - and he deliberately fires again. She falls to the ground, over the body of her daughter. Off he runs, the villain (approaching the camera in close-up), having lost his cap, the other four warders still seeing it as their duty to apprehend the grieving man who kneels by the dead bodies of his wife and daughter. He escapes their shotguns and runs away along a river, the warders giving chase, the first one behind him being the (cap-less) villain. Shots show the warders running awkwardly in the river, wet, slippery rocks beneath their feet. Their quarry reaches a precipice at which he halts, just in time, and prepares to meet his pursuers head on. He dispatches four of them (wearing caps) over the edge in a beautifully choreographed sequence. But the villain of the piece still remains at large. Cut to shot of the un-capped chief warder sitting at his ease on a park bench, smoking. The husband approaches from behind and lifts a large rock with which to kill the man but something stops him. He chucks the rock away, confronts the man and starts to beat him up, somewhat lyrically. The villain seeks to escape but is caught until reinforcements arrive and hamper the man taking his revenge by handcuffing him. Once handcuffed, the villain has a go, delivering cowardly blows to the bound man. But anger gives the man strength and he breaks his bonds and prevents the villain from escaping. He has him by the throat and no policeman can stop him (although they have their shot guns trained on him). He takes his revenge.

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