An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by D.W. Griffith and since it was available on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I have been focusing on watching older movies on YouTube and, sometimes, the quality is not great but I’m afraid this one was pretty much the worst of the bunch. Seriously, even the sound would break down every 10 mins. Concerning the movie itself, it’s interesting that it was released exactly the same year as ‘Faust’ by F.W. Murnau as both movies shared very similar plots. Unfortunately for Griffith, sure, he was a legendary director but, compared to Murnau’s masterpiece, his own take on selling your soul to the Devil was, to be honest, not really impressive. From a visual point of view, there were a couple of scenes which were pretty neat, especially the opening scene, but most of it was pretty straightforward though. Concerning the story, it seemed rather weird to me that Geoffrey would never at least talk to Mavis to tell her what was going on. However, it made also the whole thing quite intriguing, in the sense that Prince Lucio de Rimanez was quite hypnotizing, by the way, Adolphe Menjou gave here quite a subtle but actually strong performance and it seems the main character couldn’t resist doing whatever he was asking for. Eventually, the happy ending with the couple beating the Devil and living happily ever after was hardly convincing and, once again, the approach chosen in ‘Faust’ was so much more compelling. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was a really obscure feature, it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in D.W. Griffith’s work but you try to find a better version than the one I saw. 

6/10