An average movie

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, to be honest, it turned out to be another really obscure and, above all, rather disappointing effort from Griffith. The fact that the version I saw on YouTube was borderline unwatchable probably didn’t help but, even if you would put this aside, this movie was just not good. Indeed, the first 30 mins were basically a disjointed mess. For example, what was the point of the preacher and the evil violin player? What was their added value to the whole story? Anyway, after a while, they finally did focus on some underwhelming love-triangle involving 2 brothers and some exotic dancer. I don’t know how many vintage movies I have seen during which a whole bunch of dudes were drooling over a dancer like this one which is always rather cringe-inducing to watch nowadays. At least, it was interesting to see Griffith diving in the sordid streets of London and I did appreciate that he removed any kind of glamor and gave us something more realistic for once. The relationship between the two brothers also had some potential. Unfortunately, well, pretty much everything else didn’t work though. It also seemed that Griffith still didn’t learn his lesson from ‘The Birth of a Nation’, a great classic but also a seriously racist picture, as he did add a black-faced actor constantly being ridiculed just to provide some ‘supposedly’ comedic relief and the bad guy was played by a Asian character played by some Caucasian actor which was also rather appalling. Anyway, to conclude, even though it is obscure and actually not really good at all, I still think it is worth a look but probably only if you are really interested in silent features or D.W. Griffith’s work.