DW changes pace… True Heart Susie (1919)

After so much grandeur and heavy weaponry it’s good to see DW Griffith turn off the blockbuster superhighway and head off down a dust road. After Judith, George Washington and Lloyd George it’s good to meet Susie, a “plain” girl but with a heart of golden titanium. It’s Lillian Gish of course and her consummate skill, along with Billy Bitzer’s golden eye make this one of Griffith’s best looking and contemplative films: a pastoral symphony of tinted textures all run at the pace of a cow herd after a full day’s grazing…

Carol Dempster’s in it and, once again, she is not Lillian but then few people are and Miss Gish (she would have no time for Ms I suspect…) has few peers in terms of naturalistic control –  many years later she confessed that she never wanted to be caught “acting” – nor the range and commitment. King Vidor thought he might lose her to self-imposed deprivation in La Boheme but here she comes across like Stan Laurel albeit with really big, pretty eyes.

School days

Lillian’s Susie follows her man like a love-struck puppy in their school days with Gish perfecting a walk that so precisely explains her character that you hardly need to see her face. At one point the two traipse around the lanes after school and walking deep into the shot, Susie shakes her foot to remove a stray twig, once, then twice... nothing will stop her from following her sweetheart and these discomforts are so very minor when compared to the years ahead.

Lillian Gish

In less thoughtful hands, Susie might come across as a pain but she’s hard-core: not just steadfast but operating on a strict set of rules and self-restrained to the point of obstinacy but, and it’s a crucial “but”, she isn’t after winning or losing and will deal with both those imposters just the same.

This is a very Victorian stoicism but that’s the director’s homeland and from the sound of it writer Marian Fremont too.  But it’s not just being true it’s also avoiding the pitfalls of flippancy, tight dresses and make-up. At one point Susie’s aunt berates her for "trying to improve on the Lord’s work” as she tries to apply some corn flower to enable her to compete with the “paint and powder brigade”… an army of young women who seem intent on just enjoying themselves and confusing men.

Definitely the “paint and powder brigade”!

Susie doesn’t do that and from their earliest days at school, she is faithful to her sweetheart William (Robert Herron), gently propping him up in class as he struggles in spelling and walking slightly behind him, a dutiful believer with that measured walk. Interestingly, Lilian had recommended a “walk” for her sister in Hearts of the World and the two were clearly students of physical acting from tip to toes.

The pair carve their names on a tree but always just about fail to kiss: timidity being next to goodliness whilst “prettier” girls show an interest in William but he remains true to Susie.

How many prettier girls would sell their cow for a boy?

William wants to go to college and yet his father (Wilbur Higby) tells him they can’t afford it. A chance meeting with a self-promoting stranger (George Fawcett), encourages the young man as the odd man says he sees something in him and would like to help someday. An odd moment until Susie decides to sell her prize cow and then anonymously donate the money to enable William to go to school. Now that is loyalty.

William asks Susie if he should marry... the wrong end of the stick awaits.

Unaware of the source of his good fortune, William assumes it’s the stranger coming through on his promise and ventures off to learn his fortune. At first William retains his links to home and Susie but his time away changes him – he has to fend for himself and cope with more advantaged students – and he returns more self-confident and determined to be a success as a local minister.

Susie is delighted but she hasn’t realised that he’s moved imperceptibly onwards and that she is now repositioned as a friend someone associated with where he has come from not where he is going.

Bettina bats her eyelids and blows Bill away...

Susie’s hopes are sustained a while longer but soon competition more closely aligned with William’s new objectives arrives from Chicago: the painted and powdered Bettina Hopkins (Clarine Seymour). Bettina is a good-time girl and a proto-flapper (the film is set in 1909) with pals with names like Sporty Malone (Raymond Cannon) and a willowy best mate played by Carol D. She’s not a bad person just someone carried away with her own life and on the look out to settle down just that little bit too early…

The truth hits hard...

Susie did not see Bettina coming and before she knows it is helping her put on her bridal gown as she and William get married. Susie takes this all in good grace and Gish transitions with real force through denial, anger and acceptance – at the engagement she hides her tears behind a fan in pieces but holding herself together for her pal: self-less Susie.

Surviving the engagement party

Is that it then? Of course not…  the path to true hearts is never as smooth as it should be but Griffith and cast tell it with knowing wit and some style: it’s good to see a Griffith romantic comedy. He can’t help himself preach a little and you are left feeling a little confused by the idea that only one in ten women get the chance to marry and yet men have a more open field?

The couple canoodle while Susie works - lovely composition

My daughter Beth (17 and just finishing her A Levels) watched the film with me and at the end asked when Hindle Wakes was written: comparing the women’s view of their own choices. The British play was produced in 1910 (thanks Lucie D!) and does make for an interesting comparison… one hoping for goodness to be recognised and the other looking forward to an age of independence in which women’s destiny is fashioned by their own hands not by who they marry.

That’s not to say I don’t like Susie: this is a lovely-looking film superbly focused by director and with a performance of real greatness from its lead. The irony is of course that Lillian might have been respectful but she was also one of those very women who forged ahead – just like Fanny Hawthorn in fact!

True Heart Susie is available on DVD from Image and comes with a nifty score from the Mont Alto Orchestra. It’s available direct or from Amazon.

Griffith’s Gate… America (1924), BFI with Costas Fotopoulos

"You say you want a revolution…?” This film had its genesis in a letter from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Will Hays asking why there hadn’t been any major films about their revolution. This sounded wholesome enough for Mr Hays and strings were duly pulled resulting in this, what surely has to be the politest film about the war of independence.

America portrays the oppressors as a mix of mercenary Native Americans and home grown renegades led by a malevolent officer with a lust for power: Captain Butler (a quite superb performance from Lionel Barrymore). The version that was projected at the BFI seems to be the “British cut” which was toned down for domestic audiences and re-titled Love and Sacrifice. We do get the “no taxation without representation” part but the worst aspects of the war, civilian massacres and scorched earth, are attributed to rogue elements.

Neil Hamilton and Carol Dempster share a lobby card

But… let’s not go all historical or I’ll be on this for days. Needless to say, George Washington’s acceptance and return of the – surrendering – General Cornwallis's sword did not actually happen as the Brit refused to meet formally with Washington, or to attend the ceremony of surrender… Sore losers as it turned out.

The film cost United Artists around a million dollars and, whilst it didn’t do for them what Michael Cimino managed with Heaven’s Gate, it curtailed Griffith’s ability to undertake projects of similar scale in future. As with that later film, there are passages that don’t always fit the pace, as if something is still missing but the version projected was some 175 minutes long and is as close to the full-Monty we’re likely to see. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as Heaven’s Gate, but it has some stunning sequences.

Billy Bitzer is on camera to help record some full-scale battle scenes adding his own flourishes as riders are silhouetted against a dusky sky, troops advance under a dawning sun and Bunker Hill is viewed through the rigging of a British man of war. There are also a number of moments when the camera rides amongst the charging soldiers – Abel Gance was almost certainly watching – and over rough terrain when the cavalry attacks – mounted on another horse perhaps?

Bitzer's camera tracks the men and horses over battlefields

The war scenes are worth the price of entry alone and Griffith went to great pains in representing the battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill. He may have had a cast of thousands rather than the tens of thousands for Birth  and Intolerance but he makes good use of them building genuine tension using his individual heroes in his usual contrapuntal way. The closing sequence sees the rebels riding hard to rescue a beleaguered fort housing their women and children. They are distracted by a skirmish with British troops before they can ride onto the fort, Griffith cuts to individual struggles and reactions, slowly people are killed and the forts begins to give way; there’s no way the rescuers can make it is there?

Carol Dempster: not Lillian but not bad either

Those individuals have often been criticised and none more so than Carol Dempster who, whilst not being Lillian Gish (a many dozens have pointed out), is Miss Nancy Montague the daughter of the loyalist Justice Montague (Erville Alderson). On this evidence I thought Carol did a swell job and it is not her acting that gets in the way of on-screen chemistry with the dashing Nathan Holden (Neil Hamilton: how good looking was Commissioner Gordon in his youth?!), it’s the story-sprawl. Then again: I believed it and realistically, it’s hard to play the American Revolution as a romance.

Brilliant Lionel Barrymore

Charles Emmett Mack is interesting as Nancy’s brother Charles a sword-wielding playboy who won’t shirk from the fight when he sees injustice for himself; he joins the rebel fight and bravely gives his life as, mortally wounded, he crawls across the battle field to hand his comrades some desperately needed gunpowder: the kind of vignette Griffith excelled at and it is well-acted.

The aforementioned Barrymore is the undoubted star performer and his centered theatrical expertise blasts most of the rest of the screen as some over-emote and generally gurn either as over-enthused baddies or misplaced comic relief.

Louis Wolheim gets mean as Capt. Peter Hare

There is some truth to his character - a native New Yorker who trained and practiced as a lawyer and became an Indian agent for the King.  This legal training did not seem to instil adherence to the concept of justice and he was indeed amongst the most hated loyalist of the region especially after his role in the 1778 Cherry Valley massacre in which a mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Seneca and Mohawks under his command killed some 30 settlers, mostly women and children.

The Rebels battle through snow and flame

In the film, he is the focus for revolutionary sentiment – the taxation thing is all well and good but here’s the cutting edge of colonial brutality - leading his cartoon band of baddies into action and fuel-injecting the rebel cause as the film builds to a climax.

The scenes of the “loyalist” mercenaries attacking women and children still shock and, when they break down the fort’s outer wall, the ensuing assault on these innocents is uncomfortable to watch… maybe not so “polite” after all…

Massive set piece conflagrations abound!

America is nearly three hours long and it is tribute enough to DW that it doesn’t feel that long. Yes there were a lot of lengthy title cards and some uneven pacing but there were dramatic sweeps the equal of any contemporary in the rapidly-changing cinema of the early twenties. Some reviews of the time complained the Griffith was getting dated but isn’t that always the way when someone has been so ground-breaking – so vital… Innovation is subject to diminishing returns as others pick up, learn and refine and even the most brilliant of artists cannot maintain the same momentum. You get the feeling that DW needed time and more sympathetic collaborators – off screen – to really move on…

A tip of the hat too goes to Costas Fotopoulos who played along with remarkable energy and invention: he played a major part in helping us re-connect with the spirit of Griffith’s enterprise: bold, ambitious and with hands of steel!

The Red Man's View (1909)

Before the main film, we saw a very interesting short The Red Man's View from 1909, which showed a different side to Griffith the patriot and southern gentleman. Here he deals with the impact of the white man’s expansion on native cultures. The Indians are cruelly pushed off their land even though their chief looks close to death. The white men aim to keep young Minnewanna (Mary’s sister Lottie Pickford) but finally relent after the chief’s death and the pleading of her sweetheart Silver Eagle and (Owen Moore - Mary’s future husband).

It’s a poignant study and underplayed enough to let the audience draw their own conclusions about the film maker’s sympathies…

Lottie second left... Owen Moore in the middle, I think?

The BFI’s Griffith season continues throughout June culminating in those massive blockbusters the paved the way for tonight’s main film, Griffith’s last really big moment...

Promotional poster showing America's spectacular sequences