Robert Harron

As a child, Nellie Jarvis (Lillian Gish) witnessed a murder, but it only remains a shadowy memory. After the death of her parents, she is taken in by a poor but honest couple, the Hiltons (George Fawcett and (Eugenie Besserer). To help pay for her keep, she goes to work for a very nasty pair of neighbors, the Scrubbles (George Nichols and Josephine Crowell). The Hilton's oldest son is killed in World War I, but they are comforted when they visit his grave, and his spirit appears to them, insisting that they hang onto their farm. Nellie, meanwhile, is being brutalized by the Scrubbles; she's saved from an attack by Mr. Scrubble only because the jealous Mrs. Scrubble catches him. The second time Mr. Scrubble tries to have his way with Nellie, her memory of the murder comes back in sharp focus; the Scrubbles are the killers. This time she is saved by the Hilton's youngest son, Jimmie (Robert Harron). Oil is found on the Hilton's land, and Jimmie and Nellie promise themselves to each other. The picture, D.W. Griffith's first for First National, features beautiful pastoral photography, courtesy of cameraman G. W. "Billy" Bitzer. The spiritualist angle, with the dead son returning to visit his parents, was inserted because it was hot subject matter at the time; Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge had both brought spiritualism into temporary prominence. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Out of all of Griffith's films about the Great War, this one impressed the least. Perhaps Carol Dempster should share part of the blame for this -- it was her first starring vehicle and her hyperactive performance was soundly upstaged by her charismatic co-star Clarine Seymour. In brief, the plot concerns two brothers, Ralph (Richard Barthelmess) and James Grey (Robert Harron), and the girls who love them (Dempster and Seymour, respectively). Ralph is the good boy who hurries to enlist and winds up in France, where he meets up with Dempster. James, meanwhile, is a lazy reprobate who stays at home and is reformed by cabaret girl Seymour. Griffith's directing style, at this point in his career, was already starting to fall behind the times. Nevertheless, Harron's performance, along with Seymour's, shines. Tragically, both young actors would die in 1920. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This war-time D.W. Griffith film was literally filler -- some of the footage was left over from around the time he shot Hearts of the World. According to reports of the day (the film apparently no longer exists), its modest story and simple approach was a comedown from the director's other, far more impressive work. When World War I breaks out, Jim Young (Robert Harron), of Youngstown goes to Canada to enlist. While training in Britain, he becomes fired up by observing the Dowager Queen and Lady Diana Manners contributing to the war effort (these were actual members of the British royalty and nobility, and were filmed in 1917). He also meets Susie Broadplains (Lillian Gish), a reverend's daughter, but their romance is interrupted by intrigue. Sir Roger Brighton (Henry B. Walthall), who has deserted a girl (Gloria Hope) and come to town, is being courted by a group of German spies. Sir Roger gets interested in Susie when she inherits some money, and this angers Jim, who leaves for the front. Susie naively marries Sir Roger, but when she finds out about his former sweetheart, she spurns him. The spies are to light the way for some planes to bomb an arsenal, but when the driver is captured, Mademoiselle Cointee (Rosemary Theby) is pressed into service. She can't drive, so she convinces Sir Roger to help her. Jim, who has returned, chases after them and smashes their searchlight. Then he uses his own and leads the German fleet to bomb an empty field. In disgrace, Sir Roger takes his own life, leaving Jim and Susie to reunite in the war cause. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

On the heels of his masterpiece, Intolerance, which dramatized the futility of war born out of prejudice, director D.W. Griffith shifted gears for this film. Intolerance had proven a financial disaster for Griffith, so he signed with producer Adolph Zukor to release his next film. He came upon the subject matter on a trip to England to promote Intolerance. The British government, desperately looking to America for help in fighting the Germans in the first World War, persuaded Griffith to make a propaganda picture. Set in France, it's the portrait of a village overrun by the Germans during the hostilities. Griffith begins the story in 1912 with a slow developing romance between The Boy, Douglas Gordon Hamilton (Robert Harron) and The Girl, Marie Stephenson (Lillian Gish). A street singer known as The Disturber (Dorothy Gish) tries to come between them, but she settles for her own romance with Monsieur Cuckoo (Robert Anderson). In the summer of 1914, The Boy and M. Cuckoo answer the call to arms, forcing the postponement of The Boy and Girl's wedding. The film's second half cuts back and forth between the battlefield and the home front (which in this case are separated by only a few miles). By the time the film was completed, the United States had already entered the war, and over the years its extreme portrayal of German soldiers has been trimmed, the first time at the request of the wife of President Woodrow Wilson. In fact, Griffith included shots of American troops helping out in the story's final battle and then marching off to return home. The version viewed for this review, running 115 minutes, included a brief prologue with footage of Griffith touring the battlefields in France, where some documentary footage was shot, though most of the film was made in Southern California, and the director meeting with British prime minister David Lloyd George. Also notable is the appearance in small parts of future filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim as a German soldier, future character actor Ben Alexander as The Boy's youngest brother, and future entertainer Noël Coward as a young villager pushing a wheelbarrow. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives of a poor but happily married couple are disrupted by the misguided interference of a "social reform" group. A series of unfortunate circumstances culminates in the husband's being sentenced to the gallows, a fate averted by a nick-of-time rescue engineered by his wife. In the wake of the protests attending the racist content of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith wanted to demonstrate the dangers of intolerance. The Mother and the Law filled the bill to some extent, but it just wasn't "big" enough to suit his purposes. Thus, using The Mother and the Law as merely the base of the film, Griffith added three more plotlines and expanded his cinematic thesis to epic proportions. The four separate stories of Intolerance are symbolically linked by Lillian Gish as the Woman Who Rocks the Cradle ("uniter of the here and hereafter"). The "Modern Story" is essentially The Mother and the Law; the "French Story" details the persecution of the Huguenots by Catherine de Medici (Josephine Crowell); the "Biblical Story" relates the last days of Jesus Christ (Howard Gaye); and the "Babylonian Story" concerns the defeat of King Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) by the hordes of Cyrus the Persian (George Siegmann).

Rather than being related chronologically, the four stories are told in parallel fashion, slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity. The action in the film's final two reels leaps back and forth in time between Babylon, Calvary, 15th century France, and contemporary California. Described by one historian as "the only film fugue," Intolerance baffled many filmgoers of 1916 -- and, indeed, it is still an exhausting, overwhelming experience, even for audiences accustomed to the split-second cutting and multilayered montage sequences popularized by Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Schumacher, and MTV. On a pure entertainment level, the Babylonian sequences are the most effective, played out against one of the largest, most elaborate exterior sets ever built for a single film. The most memorable character in this sequence is "The Mountain Girl," played by star on the rise Constance Talmadge; when the Babylonian scenes were re-released as a separate feature in 1919, Talmadge's tragic death scene was altered to accommodate a happily-ever-after denouement. Other superb performances are delivered by Mae Marsh and Robert Harron in the Modern Story, and by Eugene Pallette and Margery Wilson in the French Story. Remarkably sophisticated in some scenes, appallingly naïve in others, Intolerance is a mixed bag dramatically, but one cannot deny that it is also a work of cinematic genius. The film did poorly upon its first release, not so much because its continuity was difficult to follow as because it preached a gospel of tolerance and pacifism to a nation preparing to enter World War I. Currently available prints of Intolerance run anywhere from 178 to 208 minutes; while it may be rough sledding at times, it remains essential viewing for any serious student of film technique. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though officially directed by Lloyd Ingraham, the delightful Hoodoo Ann was for all intents and purposes a D.W. Griffith film. Griffith not only served as producer, but also wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym "Granville Warwick." Mae Marsh plays the title character, an orphan girl who is convinced she is a jinx. An old black maidservant tells Ann that she will continue to be a "hoodoo" until the girl finds herself a husband. Ann's subsequent romance with young Jimmie Vance (Robert Harron) seems to lift her self-imposed curse, though things look bleak for a while when our heroine apparently shoots and kills the grumpy old man next door! (She doesn't, of course). Beyond the charming performance by its leading lady, Hoodoo Ann was highlighted by a hilarious sequence at a small-town movie house, where hero and heroine are thrilled by the exploits of a steely-eyed cowboy star, played in mock William S. Hart fashion by Carl Stockdale. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Paul Armstrong's venerable stage melodrama The Escape was first brought to the screen by D.W. Griffith in 1914. In true "blood will tell" fashion, the unfortunate children of a criminal family are doomed to live outside the law themselves. Petty crook Jim Joyce (Fred A. Turner) is the father of three: Mae (Blanche Sweet), Jenny (Mae Marsh), and Larry (Robert Harron). While Mae falls in love with a handsome and upright medical intern named Von Elden (Owen Moore), Jenny enters into a less-savory relationship with gangster Bull McGee (Donald Crisp). Meanwhile, brother Larry, seething with resentment over his father's brutality, skulks around like an accident waiting to happen. Things come to a dramatic head when Bull McGee, in a drunken delirium, sells Jenny into white slavery and crushes his own baby to death. Bull inevitably meets his comeuppance at the hands of Larry, while Mae and Von Elden are able to escape all the sordidness and enjoy a wholly unexpected happy ending. The Escape was remade as a "prohibition" drama in 1928. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide