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 and this one was borderline unwatchable. The fact that the movie itself was also rather weak certainly didn’t help either. Eventually, except for its historical value, I don’t think the damned thing had much to offer, I’m afraid. For me, the most intriguing thing was how Griffith went from such epics like ‘The Birth of a Nation’ or ‘Intolerance’ to such a low key romantic drama in less than a decade. Basically, it involved 2 men and 2 women who were all linked somehow but how they all ended up with each other was so convoluted and rather clumsy. I mean, what was the point of the John character since the guy was gone for most of the duration? It seemed that he was there only to make sure that Marie Carrington didn’t end up completely alone at the end. Anyway, the end-result was a typical drama about a young rich man trying to be righteous and a poor girl who was (or wasn’t? it seems that the movie never really could make up its mind about this…) playing too much with promiscuity. To make things worse, for some reason, Griffith also did add some black characters in the mix but their portrayal was just so racist and appalling. Sure, the guy was a film master but, almost a decade after the controversy following the release of ‘The Birth of a Nation’, it seems that he didn’t learn much. On the other hand, behind their cheesy pathetic love stories, that’s basically what people really believed at the time, as shocking as it might be. Anyway, to conclude, even though I didn’t care much for the damned thing, I guess it is still worth a look but only for its historical aspect. 

6/10