The God Within. 1912. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(2/14/00)

This was a really moving little film even though Griffith's religious statements in the intertitles don't hold up so well. The film alos suffers from a coincidence that really stretches the limits of credibility--that Blanche's Sweet's baby would die around the same time that Henry B. Walthall's wife would die giving birth. Nevertheless, the performers give life to this story of an abandoned unwed mother whose baby dies, who is given another baby to take care of, and gets a marriage proposal from the baby's father at the same time that her former lover decides to do right by her. A family is forged from this situation. And I liked the kindly doctor who saw that the motherless baby was just what a woman who had just lost her own baby needed.

The best moment is when they take the baby's corpse out of Blanche Sweet's arms and she doesn't want to let it go until the new baby manages to get her attention. I also liked the image at the end of the two suitors all over the heroine who previously didn't have any.