William de Vaull Movies

Alice Lake stars in this clever crime drama, which had a script written by June Mathis. When spiritualist Madame Mysteria is killed in a train wreck, her three associates decide to replace her instead of declaring her dead. One of them, the Fox (Charles Clary), calls on Jean Oliver (Lake), who he knew from prison. Jean was serving time after being framed by her former employer, Mrs. Ramsey (Kate Lester), for a theft just to keep her and her son, Donald Ramsey (Carl Gerrard), from marrying. Jean agrees to the crooks' scheme providing that they help her kidnap the baby that belongs to Donald and the woman that his mother had him marry. She plans to raise the boy as a crook, and keeps him in the psychic parlors while she swindles New York society folk out of their jewelry. Meanwhile, her sweetheart prior to Ramsey, Gordon Grant (Allan Forrest), is helping his friends track down the thief who is stealing their jewels. He traces the crimes to Madame Mysteria, and the Ramsey kidnapping to Jean. He goes to the psychic's parlors and Jean has a sudden stroke of real psychic power and takes off her disguise to face Gordon. Together they approach Mrs. Ramsey and make her sign a document absolving Jean of any wrongdoing. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Director King Vidor would always take the slightest excuse to champion the common man (or woman), and that he does with this slight little film. Country girl Dorothy Perkins (Florence Vidor, the director's wife) goes to the big city and lands young millionaire Monte Rhodes (Charles Meredith). Monte is quite fond of his family tree, so he is horrified when Dorothy's relatives, with their homespun ways, come to visit. When he gives his wife a hard time about being "common," she promptly leaves him and goes home, where she is warmly welcomed. While she is gone, Monte comes to appreciate her simple ways and asks her forgiveness. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

One might be inclined to dismiss the title of this film as a contradiction in terms -- but with Lillian Gish in the lead, how could the heroine be anything else but innocent? Based on a story by D.W. Griffith, writing pseudonymously as "Granville Warwick," the story concerns a Kentucky belle named Dorothy Raleigh (Gish), who impulsively marries big-city gambler Forbes Stewart (Sam De Grasse). As a result, Dorothy's grim, taciturn father Colonel Raleigh (Spottiswood Aitken) declares that, so far as he is concerned, his daughter is dead. Inexplicably abandoned by Stewart, the pregnant Dorothy returns home, only to be denied entrance by her unforgiving father. The girl moves to the "colored" section of town, where she gives birth to her baby. Compounding Dorothy's woes is the sudden appearance of Stewart's current mistress (Mary Alden), who claims that she has married Stewart. Disconsolately, Dorothy prepares to take her own life, when Stewart returns, explaining that he has been detained by a trumped-up prison term, and begging his wife's forgiveness. Lillian Gish seldom mentioned An Innocent Magdalene in later years, preferring instead to discuss the concurrently produced Griffith production Intolerance, in which she played a much smaller but far more memorable role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The most successful and artistically advanced film of its time, The Birth of a Nation has also sparked protests, riots, and divisiveness since its first release. The film tells the story of the Civil War and its aftermath, as seen through the eyes of two families. The Stonemans hail from the North, the Camerons from the South. When war breaks out, the Stonemans cast their lot with the Union, while the Camerons are loyal to Dixie. After the war, Ben Cameron (Henry B. Walthall), distressed that his beloved south is now under the rule of blacks and carpetbaggers, organizes several like-minded Southerners into a secret vigilante group called the Ku Klux Klan. When Cameron's beloved younger sister Flora (Mae Marsh) leaps to her death rather than surrender to the lustful advances of renegade slave Gus (Walter Long), the Klan wages war on the new Northern-inspired government and ultimately restores "order" to the South. In the original prints, Griffith suggested that the black population be shipped to Liberia, citing Abraham Lincoln as the inspiration for this ethnic cleansing. Showings of Birth of a Nation were picketed and boycotted from the start, and as recently as 1995, Turner Classic Movies cancelled a showing of a restored print in the wake of the racial tensions around the O.J. Simpson trial verdict. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi