The Charge of the Light Brigade (1912 film)

Not to be confused with The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936 film) or The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968 film).

The Charge of the Light Brigade
The 1912 theatrical poster with actor James Gordon (center) as Lord Raglan, the one-armed commander-in-chief of British forces
Directed byJ. Searle Dawley
Screenplay byJ. Searle Dawley
Based onPoem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Produced byThomas A. Edison, Inc.
StarringRichard Neill
Benjamin Wilson
James Gordon
Charles Sutton
Production
company
Distributed byThe General Film Company
Release date
  • October 11, 1912 (1912-10-11)[1]
Running time
1 reel, 1025 feet at initial release (15 minutes)[1][a]
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSilent, English intertitles

The Charge of the Light Brigade is a 1912 American silent historical drama film directed by J. Searle Dawley. Produced by Edison Studios, the film portrays the disastrous yet inspiring military attack in October 1854 by British light cavalry against Russian artillery positions in the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Director Dawley also wrote the scenario for this production, adapting it in part from the famous 1854 narrative poem about the charge by British poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who completed his poem just six weeks after the actual event.[2] The film's action scenes and landscape footage were shot between late August and early September 1912, while Dawley and his company of players and crew were on location in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In order to produce a sizable and believable recreation of the charge, the director needed a very large number of horsemen. Fortunately for Dawley, the commander of United States Army cavalry at Fort D. A. Russell at Cheyenne agreed to provide "about 800" troopers and "their trained mounts" to the Edison project.[3][4]

The film was originally released in American cinemas on October 11, 1912, and four years later rereleased under a renewed copyright by Thomas Edison, Inc.[1][5] An 11-minute print of that 1916 rerelease survives, copies of which can be viewed today on various streaming services.[6]

Intertitles with verses from Lord Tennyson's 1854 poem are presented throughout the film.
  1. ^ a b c "10-11 The Charge of the Light Brigade...Edison 1025", "Complete Record of Current Films", Motography (Chicago, Illinois), October 26, 1912, p. 343. Retrieved via Internet Archive, August 11, 2020.
  2. ^ "The Charge of the Light Brigade (1912)", British Film Institute (BFI), London, United Kingdom. Retrieved August 26, 2020.
  3. ^ "'Charge of the Light Brigade'", Motography, September 14, 1912, p. 223. Retrieved via Internet Archive, August 25, 2020.
  4. ^ "American Silent Feature Film: Database From the report 'The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929'", searchable database that includes nearly 11,000 titles in both complete and partial states. Library of Congress. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  5. ^ "Complete Record of Current Films" / 6-14 The Charge of the Light Brigade...Edison 1000", Motography (Chicago, Illinois), June 24, 1916, p. 1462. Retrieved via Internet Archive, August 25, 2020.
  6. ^ "The Charge of the Light Brigade (1912) [1916 re-release version]", running time 11:11, uploaded by Films by the Year on YouTube (San Bruno, California) on September 13, 2016. Retrieved August 26, 2020.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).