The Charge of the Light Brigade (1912 film)

The Charge of the Light Brigade is a 1912 American silent historical drama film directed by J. Searle Dawley (1877-1949). Produced by the Edison Studios, the film portrays the disastrous yet inspiring military attack in October 1854 by British light cavalry against Imperial Russian artillery positions in the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (1854-1856), in the Crimea of southern Russia along the Black Sea coast. 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 (1809-1892), who completed his poem just six weeks after the actual battle event. 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" mounted Army Cavalry troopers and "their trained mounts" to the Edison filming project of the new cinematic invention.

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. An 11-minute print of that 1916 rerelease survives, copies of which can be viewed today on various streaming services.