Loyola O'Connor

This dreary drama would never have been made into a motion picture if The Miracle Man had not been such a big hit. Because of his complete trust in a Divine Power, Michaelis, a shepherd (Milton Sills), has acquired powers to heal the sick. One woman he treats, Mary Beeler (Fontaine La Rue), has a niece, Rhoda Williams (Ann Forrest), and Michaelis falls in love with her. But Rhoda is a fallen woman, having lived with a doctor without the benefit of a marriage contract. Throngs of suffering believers gather at Mary's home to be healed, but Michaelis has lost his powers. Rhoda believes that she is the cause because of her sinful past, and she confesses to the crowd. But they think that Michaelis is a fake and he is stoned out of the village. Michaelis -- who also believes that his relationship with Rhoda has sapped him of his powers -- comes to realize the strength of her love for him. He finally figures out that his lack of faith in that love was the problem. His powers return in time to bring an infant back to life, and he and Rhoda reunite. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Anita Stewart plays a young woman with an unfortunate past in this unoriginal drama, based on a magazine story by Kathleen Norris. Harriet Field (Stewart) gets wrapped up in the carefree Greenwich Village life, and Royal Blondin (Ward Crane) tricks her into a fake marriage. When she wakes up to what she's done, she balks, but Blondin forces her to stay until he tires of her, and then he drifts away. Harriet goes to work for the Carter family as a companion to their daughter, Nina (Margaret Landis). Isabelle (Myrtle Stedman), the wife of Richard Carter (Charles Richman), is having an affair with family friend Anthony Pope (Irving Cummings). Blondin, meanwhile, shows up to romance Nina. Harriet doesn't want to see Nina's life ruined, but when she goes to Blondin, he threatens to ruin her reputation. Isabelle and Pope run away together, but they die in an auto accident. Mr. Carter confesses his love to Harriet and convinces her to marry him. She then blocks Blondin's attempt to wed Nina, and confesses everything to Carter. Carter pays Blondin a large sum of money to keep his mouth shut and leave, but before he can take the cash, he is killed by a longtime enemy. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

True Heart Susie is one of D.W. Griffith's "pastoral" films, wherein plot takes second place to characterization and romance. Lillian Gish plays Susie May Trueheart, who so loves local boy William Jenkins (Robert Harron) that she secretly finances his education. Returning to his home town as a minister, Jenkins never catches on that Susie is crazy for him. While Our Heroine pines away, Jenkins marries The Wrong Woman, young temptress Betty Hopkins (Clarine Seymour). Betty begins indulging in affairs with other men, but Susie loyally keeps this information from the reverend Jenkins. Even when Betty dies of pneumonia, Susie refuses to reveal all she's done on Jenkins' behalf. Finally, Susie's Aunt (Kate Bruce) can stand no more: she tells Jenkins the whole story, whereupon he takes Susie in his arms and pledges eternal devotion. In the hands of a lesser director, True Heart Susie might have been impossibly maudlin (and unbelievable; after all, can anyone be as much of a blockhead as Reverend Jenkins seems to be?) As it stands, the film's dramatic and heart-tugging value has not diminished, not even after the passage of nearly eighty years. ~ Hal Erickson, 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

In this silent tragedy a bright, creative young woman from the slums gets into considerable mischief and lands in jail. While languishing there, the girl begins to write down her thoughts and observations. She then sends them to the warden who recognizing her talent, helps get her hired onto the local newspaper. When he succeeds, he and a reporter rush down to her cell to tell her the great news. Unfortunately, they are too late for she has committed suicide. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The trials and tribulations of heroine Diane (Blanche Sweet) begin when she's seduced by a far-from-noble nobleman, the Duke of Cluny (Edward Mackaye). Feeling herself "tainted," Diane decides to shun all men. But a handsome American naval officer, Lt. Dodd (Carlyle Blackwell), cares not a whit about Diane's "shameful" past. In fact, he sees to it that the Duke will never again deflower an unwitting female by shooting the man in a duel. Understandably impressed, Diane agrees to marry the dashing Dodd. Adapted by William C. DeMille from a play by Channing Pollock, The Secret Garden was directed by Frank Reicher, better known today for such film character roles as Captain Engelhorn in King Kong. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide