The White Caps

The White Caps (1905)

Two members of a vigilante group known as 'The White Caps' post a warning sign on a man's home. When the man comes home, he tears down the sign, and then proceeds to abuse his wife both verbally and physically. As soon as she can get away from him, the wife leaves home with her child to find a place of refuge. When the vigilantes find out about this, they arm themselves with rifles and immediately go to confront the abusive husband.

Date of release
1905-09-14
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (7)
Runtime
12m
Genres
Drama
Director
Edwin S. Porter, Wallace McCutcheon Sr.

Casting

Interesting facts

The White Caps is a 1905 American silent drama film, directed by Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter showing how a man abusing his wife is punished by a group of white-hooded men. It is one of the first American films exposing conjugal violence against women and showing the action of vigilante groups.

Production

The film was shot on location in August 1905 in Demarest and Fort Lee in New Jersey.

The film was inspired by Thomas Dixon's controversial novel The Clansman published in 1905 and whose theatre adaptation was in Broadway rehearsal at the time of production of the film. The play, which presented the Ku Klux Klan as a "force for regeneration", would become ten years later the main inspiration for D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation.

Charles Musser mentions that White Caps members, "generally faced with declining income and political power, acted as agents of social control, punishing offences that the state and local governments failed to address adequately.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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