Country: USA
Released: December 28, 1921
Genre: Drama, Historical Fiction
Directed by: D.W. Griffith
Produced by: D.W. Griffith
Written by: D.W. Griffith
Griffith, what did history ever do to you? I mean sure it labeled you a horrible racist and hateful bigot, but it also occationally considers you the 'Father of American Film!' Surely there's no need to butcher it like this?
Okay, enough of that. Let's get on with it. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I-I mean, it was the best of times, it was... no that's not right, it was the best of times...
Wait what I meant to say was: it was just the worst of times, on the eve of the French Revolution. The film stars Henriette (oh hi again Lillian Gish) and her adopted sister Louise (Dorothy Gish), the blind daughter of an aristocrat who was abandoned at birth and raised by peseants. What's odd about his whole setup is that even though they're supposed to be adopted sisters Griffith still cast two actual sisters to play them, so it's actually weird that they look so similar. Sure they have a lot of chemistry but its just... odd. Was this a marketing thing or did you just forget they weren't supposed to be biological siblings?
Fuck it let's just move on, there's a lot to cover.
The two take a trip to Paris where Henriette is kidnapped by the Marquis de Parille (Morgan Wallace), a noble who between drinking peasant tears and organizing the annual Hunger Games throws lavish parties in his country house through which to... rape girls apparently. Fortunately Henriette is saved from this fate by her love-interest the honourable Chevalier de Vaudrey, one of the only aristocrats in this movie that isn't a horny, moustache twirling asshole.
Speaking of moustaches, Louise, who is left blind and helpless in the city, is kidnapped herself by Mother Forcharde (Lucille Le Verne), a cruel peasant woman with very distracting lip hair who forces Louise to beg for her and bears a striking resemblance to the character of Madame Thénardier from Les Miserables. While Henriette looks for her lost sister the French revolution happens, oh no! Nobles are killed in the street and bedlam ensues. Just as Henriette is about to be reunited with Louise she and Vaudrey are arrested for being aristocrats and sentenced to death by Robespierre (Sydney Herbert), who is portrayed by the movie as more evil than a child-molesting Hitler. Eventually though they are pardoned by Danton (Monte Blue) and are reunited with Louise, who was freed by her love interest Pierre (Frank Puglia), Mother Frochard's son. The film ends with everyone marrying everyone, Robespierre being killed off-screen, and France becoming a land of peace and fraternity for ever, except for all those other uprisings and wars but who gives a shit about those.
As I've already hinted the film is very Dickensian in its themes and aesthetic, but whereas Dickens had interesting, complex characters Orphans of the Storm just has a bunch of one-dimensional pricks belonging to different factions. And that's really Griffith's style, its not about the characters themselves its about the groups they represent and the struggle between them: blacks/Asians versus whites, Protestants versus Catholics, or in this case rich versus the huddled masses. Each group finds a shallow complexity in having both good and bad characters within their ranks but ultimately the people themselves don't feel very human.
And my god, the history. Did you really need to misrepresent another time period like this? I know most people don't give a rat's ass about movies being historically accurate but being a history aficionado I can't help but feel irked by it. Like why is Robespierre the unrepentant villain? I know he was a cruel man what with his Reign of Terror and all but the way the film tells it you'd think he drank the blood of unbaptized babies or something. It's like Cyrus the Great from Tolerance all over again. Also the French Revolution was a spontaneous uprising not a premeditated event organized by a few intellectuals controlling an unruly mob of savage peasants.
Which brings me to my main point. What it your message here, movie? On the one hand you keep going on about the tyranny of the aristocracy and the suffering of the common people, but on the other hand you portray those common people as a mob of unwashed, dimwitted hicks. Things only get more confusing whenever your inter-titles keeps mentioning the spectre of Bolshevism threatening the world. Oh yeah, this movie has a hate-boner for Bolshevism. That isn't entirely outlandish considering Griffith's politics and the time period (this movie was released at the tail-end of the first Red Scare), and the French Revolution isn't a bad event to draw historical parallels with Bolshevism. But the movie is so indecisive I'm not entirely sure what it's message is. Is it fuck aristocrats but also fuck poor people and we should have a democracy run by the Bourgeoisie? I don't know, and neither does the film.
The only thing it does know is that America has the best political system to ever grace this miserable planet and all countries on Earth would love to just graze the glowing freedom it projects, a message I garnered from a bizarre scene in which Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette show up for half a minute to say as much. They don't appear again, the scene is never mentioned afterwards, and overall it serves no purpose other than to feed into American jingoism.
One quick side note: Fuck Jefferson! Where my fellow Hamiltonians at?
As always the cinematography and staging are all amazing, but what else do you expect from Griffith? The battle scenes are great, the costumes are beautiful, and the sets really transport you to the time period. But to be honest it all has a kind of 'been there, done that feel' that I couldn't shake while watching it. After the grandiosity of Babylon there really isn't much wow to naturalistic cinema anymore, or at least the way Griffith does it. I completely zoned out through some of the film's epic set pieces and found myself wishing for the abstract simplicity of German expressionism, a phrase so pretentious I can feel the elbow patches forming on my jacket.
But because this is Griffith's last film on the list I can't help but feel a bit melancholic. I mean, he has been a huge part this blog. So let me take a final moment to address him directly.
Look Griffith, I don't like you and you don't like me... mostly because you're dead but that's beside the point. You are one of the most influential and hated directors in all of history. The techniques you employed were revolutionary, and the stories you wove were regressive and ignorant. Your filmmaking influenced a whole generation of directors and kickstarted the golden age of cinema, and your politics ignited riots across the country. Your films were great spectacles to behold, and often bigoted to their core. For better or for worse you are considered by many to be the father of American cinema. Sometimes I loved your movies and sometimes I hated them. Sometimes they filled me joy and sometimes they completely enraged me.
But no matter how I felt about them at the end of the day you always gave me something to write about, and that's got to count for something.
Released: December 28, 1921
Genre: Drama, Historical Fiction
Directed by: D.W. Griffith
Produced by: D.W. Griffith
Written by: D.W. Griffith
Griffith, what did history ever do to you? I mean sure it labeled you a horrible racist and hateful bigot, but it also occationally considers you the 'Father of American Film!' Surely there's no need to butcher it like this?
Okay, enough of that. Let's get on with it. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I-I mean, it was the best of times, it was... no that's not right, it was the best of times...
Wait what I meant to say was: it was just the worst of times, on the eve of the French Revolution. The film stars Henriette (oh hi again Lillian Gish) and her adopted sister Louise (Dorothy Gish), the blind daughter of an aristocrat who was abandoned at birth and raised by peseants. What's odd about his whole setup is that even though they're supposed to be adopted sisters Griffith still cast two actual sisters to play them, so it's actually weird that they look so similar. Sure they have a lot of chemistry but its just... odd. Was this a marketing thing or did you just forget they weren't supposed to be biological siblings?
Fuck it let's just move on, there's a lot to cover.
The two take a trip to Paris where Henriette is kidnapped by the Marquis de Parille (Morgan Wallace), a noble who between drinking peasant tears and organizing the annual Hunger Games throws lavish parties in his country house through which to... rape girls apparently. Fortunately Henriette is saved from this fate by her love-interest the honourable Chevalier de Vaudrey, one of the only aristocrats in this movie that isn't a horny, moustache twirling asshole.
Speaking of moustaches, Louise, who is left blind and helpless in the city, is kidnapped herself by Mother Forcharde (Lucille Le Verne), a cruel peasant woman with very distracting lip hair who forces Louise to beg for her and bears a striking resemblance to the character of Madame Thénardier from Les Miserables. While Henriette looks for her lost sister the French revolution happens, oh no! Nobles are killed in the street and bedlam ensues. Just as Henriette is about to be reunited with Louise she and Vaudrey are arrested for being aristocrats and sentenced to death by Robespierre (Sydney Herbert), who is portrayed by the movie as more evil than a child-molesting Hitler. Eventually though they are pardoned by Danton (Monte Blue) and are reunited with Louise, who was freed by her love interest Pierre (Frank Puglia), Mother Frochard's son. The film ends with everyone marrying everyone, Robespierre being killed off-screen, and France becoming a land of peace and fraternity for ever, except for all those other uprisings and wars but who gives a shit about those.
As I've already hinted the film is very Dickensian in its themes and aesthetic, but whereas Dickens had interesting, complex characters Orphans of the Storm just has a bunch of one-dimensional pricks belonging to different factions. And that's really Griffith's style, its not about the characters themselves its about the groups they represent and the struggle between them: blacks/Asians versus whites, Protestants versus Catholics, or in this case rich versus the huddled masses. Each group finds a shallow complexity in having both good and bad characters within their ranks but ultimately the people themselves don't feel very human.
And my god, the history. Did you really need to misrepresent another time period like this? I know most people don't give a rat's ass about movies being historically accurate but being a history aficionado I can't help but feel irked by it. Like why is Robespierre the unrepentant villain? I know he was a cruel man what with his Reign of Terror and all but the way the film tells it you'd think he drank the blood of unbaptized babies or something. It's like Cyrus the Great from Tolerance all over again. Also the French Revolution was a spontaneous uprising not a premeditated event organized by a few intellectuals controlling an unruly mob of savage peasants.
Which brings me to my main point. What it your message here, movie? On the one hand you keep going on about the tyranny of the aristocracy and the suffering of the common people, but on the other hand you portray those common people as a mob of unwashed, dimwitted hicks. Things only get more confusing whenever your inter-titles keeps mentioning the spectre of Bolshevism threatening the world. Oh yeah, this movie has a hate-boner for Bolshevism. That isn't entirely outlandish considering Griffith's politics and the time period (this movie was released at the tail-end of the first Red Scare), and the French Revolution isn't a bad event to draw historical parallels with Bolshevism. But the movie is so indecisive I'm not entirely sure what it's message is. Is it fuck aristocrats but also fuck poor people and we should have a democracy run by the Bourgeoisie? I don't know, and neither does the film.
The only thing it does know is that America has the best political system to ever grace this miserable planet and all countries on Earth would love to just graze the glowing freedom it projects, a message I garnered from a bizarre scene in which Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette show up for half a minute to say as much. They don't appear again, the scene is never mentioned afterwards, and overall it serves no purpose other than to feed into American jingoism.
One quick side note: Fuck Jefferson! Where my fellow Hamiltonians at?
As always the cinematography and staging are all amazing, but what else do you expect from Griffith? The battle scenes are great, the costumes are beautiful, and the sets really transport you to the time period. But to be honest it all has a kind of 'been there, done that feel' that I couldn't shake while watching it. After the grandiosity of Babylon there really isn't much wow to naturalistic cinema anymore, or at least the way Griffith does it. I completely zoned out through some of the film's epic set pieces and found myself wishing for the abstract simplicity of German expressionism, a phrase so pretentious I can feel the elbow patches forming on my jacket.
But because this is Griffith's last film on the list I can't help but feel a bit melancholic. I mean, he has been a huge part this blog. So let me take a final moment to address him directly.
Look Griffith, I don't like you and you don't like me... mostly because you're dead but that's beside the point. You are one of the most influential and hated directors in all of history. The techniques you employed were revolutionary, and the stories you wove were regressive and ignorant. Your filmmaking influenced a whole generation of directors and kickstarted the golden age of cinema, and your politics ignited riots across the country. Your films were great spectacles to behold, and often bigoted to their core. For better or for worse you are considered by many to be the father of American cinema. Sometimes I loved your movies and sometimes I hated them. Sometimes they filled me joy and sometimes they completely enraged me.
But no matter how I felt about them at the end of the day you always gave me something to write about, and that's got to count for something.
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