True Heart Susie. 1919. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(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.

Schneider's Anti-Noise Crusade. 1909. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(4/18/00)

Griffith was never very good at comedy, but this film was fun. It is about a man whose wife's relations (if I remember correctly) come to visit, bringing with them a noisy bird, a trombone which the child plays, etc. The husband goes crazy and is about to take drastic action when he finds burglars in the house. He's resourceful enough to take advantage of the situation and pays them to take the stuff away.

Intolerance. 1916. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(3/28/00-3/30/00))

The world is full of nasty people. That's really the message of Griffith's Intolerance. And he brings together an avalanche of evidence to prove that this has basically been the way of the world from the beginning of time.

Griffith refers, in his opening remarks, to people who require a moral even with their entertainment. This is funny because Griffith takes a pretty preachy tone and those opening remarks go on for a considerable length, giving Intolerance the feel of a sermon or lecture rather than entertainment.

Griffith intercuts between four stories showing intolerance and bigotry in different time periods; three, actually, because one of the four "stories" is really a series of tableaus from the life of Christ which are sort of used as punctuation. It is not a connected story. I think that Griffith felt that his audience was familiar enough with the life of Christ that he could simply refer to it from time to time.

I felt that the presentation of Christ was pompous, but that could be my own prejudice. I didn't like the actorwho played Him and while the film didn't seem to undertake to develop the character of Christ, It wasn't even fleshed out.

There is a story built around the St. Barthlomew's Day massacre of the Hugenots in France. There is so little of this story that it is difficult to get involved with it. However, the reconstruction's use of still images suggests that there was a lot more to this story originally and that it suffered most heavily when the film was re-edited. I suspect that if we could see Intolerance in its original form this story would take its place as a major thread of the film, possibly equal or nearly so to the Babylonian story and the modern story.

I think it is the Babylonian story that first comes to mind when one thinks of Intolerance. It's the still of the set of Babylon that one tends to associate with the title--or at least I do. The Babylonian story is the great spectacle and that is why it is there. But I don't think it really probes that deeply into the nature of intolerance. The priest doesn't like the ruler Belshazzar whose worship of the goddess Ishtar is undermining his power. So he sells out to Cyrus the Persian. It's a story of political intrigue and it doesn't even have anything as pointed as the moment in the Hugenot story where two figures of power each comment that the other would be a great man if only "he thought as we do." That's the whole problem.

What the Babylonian story does have is the wonderful mountain girl, played by Constance Talmadge, who becomes forever loyal to her ruler Belshazzar after he gives her her freedom when she is up for sale in the marriage market. Loyalty returned--it's the other side of the double-dealing and ugliness of spirit which pervade so much of this film.

Talmadge is so full of life. I kept wishing that her admirer, "the Rhapsode," would actually win her heart. But he doesn't--her heart is given to Balshazzar who has a love of his own. But she loves him to the very end--unto death.

And then there is the modern story which to my mind is easily the best part of the film. And I think that it is the only part of the film that can live up to the intellectual claims that Griffith made for it. It is a whole analysis of the effects of intolerance. We see some very frustrated women ("biddies," we might call them) who get their jollies by pushing people around and a frustrated rich woman who bankrolls them. In order to fund the enterprise her brother cuts the pay of his employees, there is a strike, people are killed, some have to leave and go to the city where the boy, unable to find work, drifts into a life of crime, and so on. It is a very elaborate linking of cause and effect.

And it is mixed with savage commentary. "When women fail to attract men, they often turn to Reform as a second choice," reads a title or words very close to it. When Bobby Harron's father is killed in the strike, the film cuts to an image of Jenkins sitting alone in his gigantic office, one of the causes of all the trouble. Griffith has a lot to say in this story and he speaks in a clear, direct voice.

The modern story is particularly effective because it tells a damn good story with a thrilling last-minute rescue of Bobby Harron from being executed for a murder he did not commit. It is the most exciting part of the picture. And it is the modern story which features Mae Marsh whose portrayal of "The Dear One" is the most gripping performance in the whole film. Miss Marsh is totally lovable and vivacious from the beginning, though I find her less attractive as the story unfolds, but that is only because her character matures. The final moment when she throws her arms about Bobby Harron and starts madly kissing him is one of the most powerful and beautiful moments I have ever seen in a Griffith film. All the spectacle of the Babylonian story can't even come close to it.

I found myself thinking that the character of "The Friendless One" in the modern story--the woman who actually does commit the murder and is tormented by her conscience--would have been a great part for Asta Nielsen. I probably thought of that because Nielsen played a very similar part to great effect in Pabst's The Joyless Street.

I did think that all the shots of Lillian Gish as the woman rocking the cradle as the film drove to its climaxes was a little too much. Griffith just didn't know when to stop. The final scenes of angels hanging in the sky and people throwing down their weapons (or something like that) to embrace a world free of intolerance were also "too much"--but of course that's looking at it from a perspective of 84 years later.

It is sad to watch those final shots and realize that the world really hasn't freed itself from the bonds of intolerance. At least, it didn't happen in the twentieth century. We can still hope, I suppose, but it is sad to walk away from a film with such high hopes, made so long ago.

The Battle of Elderbush Gulch. 1913. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(2/14/00)

Mae Marsh steals the show. The action scenes are what this film is most famous for, but I personally just can't get involved in them. I have a real problem with action sequences which frequently bore me. So I confess that I was unable to appreciate that aspect. But Mae Marsh was adorable and wiped Lillian Gish right off the screen.

Mae is a young girl sent to live with her uncle who will not allow her two dogs in his cabin. She is resourceful enough to cut a little door in the cabin so that she can bring them in to sleep with her and her still younger sister. She is spunky enough to grab the dogs away from Indians who are planning on eating them. Unfortunately, this incident inflames already-existing hostilities when one of Marsh's elders shoots (I think--I'm not sure) one of the Indians.

During the Indian attack Mae takes charge of saving Lillian Gish's baby and securing herself, the younger sister, the baby and the two puppies in a window seat. After the attack is over and the adults are frantic for the welfare of the kids, the window seat pops up--and there they are! It is a glorious moment and for me it is far more memorable than the battle scenes.

The two puppies are quite adorable as well.

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.

The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch. 1912. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(2/11/00)

Blanche Sweet really shines in this one-reel Griffith picture. She becomes romantically involved with a man who decides he prefers her sister or friend. Sweet struggles with very human emotions of jealousy. When she learns of villains having this other woman hostage she at first is willing to let them get away with it, but then changes her mind. She really gets the character's emotions across, though it is hard to understand why the man involved would prefer the other woman to Blanche Sweet.

The ending might seem ridiculous to modern eyes in that Sweet's character finds another boyfriend in pretty short order. But I think it might have been necessary to collapse the action to tell a story like this in a one-reel film.

Some of the photography was especially lovely.

Broken Ways. 1913. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(2/11/00)

This was one of the most enjoyable early Griffith films I have seen. Blanche Sweet looked lovely and the story of a woman who leaves a villainous husband who mistreats her had both pathos and excitement. It was a fine moment when Henry B. Walthall and Blanche Sweet confront each other in the telegraph office after she has believed him dead.

His Mother's Scarf. 1911. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(2/8/00)

I think this film was projected too fast and it also looked as if some of the intertitles were missing.

Dorothy West was appealing as the girl who is loved by two brothers. The film starts with a shock when the brothers receive a scarf from their mother and news of her death in the same mail shipment.

I actually forget what happened in the rest of the film, though I remember it being touching.

The Massacre. 1912. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(2/3/00)

This is a well-made film for 1912. My problem is that it is mostly a battle between whites and Indians and I personally don'tget interested in such scenes no matter how well done. But I did appreciate the western vistas, photographed from a high angle.
I admire this film in that it first shows Indians being massacred by whites. The attack on the settlers thus seems justified in a way, though no less hostile. So Griffith is kind of fair in his presentation of Indians. However, I would have admired it more if there had been more footage of the first massacre, if the two attacks had been better balanced. We see Indian women cowering with their babies, but not nearly as much as we see of white women in the same predicament. And we are emotionally involved with some ofthe whites in a way that we aren't with the Indians, especially the character played by Blanche Sweet. But the film is fair-minded as far as it goes.
I thought it was touching how the hero loved and lost both mother and daughter.

The Road to the Heart. 1909. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(1/31/00)

This was another film shown with the intertitles cut out. And it was a preservation print to boot.

Not much to say about this. It was a silly little piece in which a man will not accept his daughter's boyfriend (or fiance, or whatever). So the daughter leaves. And the wife goes with her. And the man is left without anyone to cook for him. He has different people cook for him and is dissaftisfied with the results. One who is a cowboy type gets angry and shoots up the place. The man goes and rejoins his family.

It isn't very funny, but then comedy was never Griffith's strong point. It only interested me as an historical curiosity.

A Woman Scorned. 1911. et al.

(11/14/99)

A Woman Scorned. 1911. Bobby the Coward. 1911. A Country Cupid. 1911. A Knight of the Road. 1911. All directed by D. W. Griffith.


I really liked A Woman Scorned. It had very effective cross-cutting and at the same time credible human emotions. Afterwards, my interest began to wane, maybe because the films were hurting my eyes. I really liked Florence La Badie (?), the female lead in Bobby the Coward. She had real charisma. By contrast, I wasn't so taken by Blanche Sweet in A Country Cupid and found it hard to relate to all the males who were so taken with her. I had trouble following it and keeping everybody straight, though I did like the little boy who acts out of true love and looks after the schoolmarm's romantic interests, even though she obviously doesn't feel much for him. I wasn't very interested in A Knight of the Road, except at the end when the hobo is offered a respectable life, but doesn't want it and runs away. That was cute.

Way Down East. 1920. Directed by D. W. Griffith.

(11/4/99)

It's almost unbearably intense in places. They say such intensity needs to be offset by "Comedy relief." I don't know, but I do know that the comedy in this film didn't work. It's really sad because it mars the film badly.

Richard Barthelmess is superb, but it is Lillian Gish's show all the way. Great moments include when she learns she isn't really married, when her baby dies and when she is told to leave the place she is working and finally asserts herself and tells her side of the story. For me, that is the real climax of the film--it is such a great moment of release--and the scene on the ice floes is just an anti-climax. I was surprised, but I wasn't overwhelmed by that famous sequence.

The multiple wedding ceremony at the end is a very rich moment. Through no fault of her own Anna had become anoutcast, an alien. That multiple wedding shows her being accepted back into the community.

I was a little bit put off by the sermon-like tone at the beginning of the film. Just tell the story and let us draw our own conclusions. I see the situation a little different than D. W. For me, it is sad that in this society a man could not satisfy his sexual urges without causing real pain to others. That's how I see it.