(5/8/01)
True Heart Susie is a very modest film from Griffith. It is not a big spectacle and it doesn't have any wrenching dramatic scenes. It is a simple story of a boy and a girl in a small-town or country milieu. It has a quaint, old-fashioned look about it.
Lillian Gish plays a girl who secretly finances the education of the boy she loves. She expects him to marry her, but he marries someone else instead.
The treatment of Susie is psychologically insightful. It is a study of a woman who sees what she wants to see. When the hero makes a comment about how men don't marry women who wear a lot of makeup and fancy clothes, Susie misinterprets it. She develops a whole fantasy in her mind that she and this guy are engaged, writing in her diary about when they will be married. Griffith doesn't develop this theme and Susie's devotion does in the end win out. And this tendency she has to fantasy, or a warped view of the situation, is only a discordant note mixed in with genuinely fine qualities. And that is actually true-to-life.
Lillian Gish has a primness which I personally find off-putting. It is contrasted with Carol Dempster who brings the film to life as the woman who marries Robert Harron for security only to then be (probably) unfaithful to him. I do resent Griffith's equation of the desire to party and have a good time with "badness."
This film has the charming, tender flavor of an old-fashioned Valentine one might find preserved between the pages of a very old book.
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