The Avenging Conscience: or “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is a 1914 silent horror drama film directed by D. W. Griffith. The film is based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” and the poem “Annabel Lee”. Plot: A young man (Henry B. Walthall) falls in love with a beautiful woman (Blanche Sweet), but is prevented by his… Read more →
Home, Sweet Home (1914) is an American silent biographical drama directed by D.W. Griffith.The film starred Earle Foxe, Henry Walthall and Dorothy Gish in the lead roles. Plot: John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and girlfriend, Payne begins to lead a dissolute life that leads to ruin and depression…. Read more →
Intolerance is a 1916 epic silent film directed by D. W. Griffith. Subtitles include Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages and A Sun-Play of the Ages. Widely regarded as one of the great masterpieces of the silent era, the three-and-a-half-hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines, each separated by several centuries: (1) a contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption, (2) a Judean… Read more →
Orphans of the Storm is a 1921 silent drama film by D. W. Griffith set in late-18th-century France, before and during the French Revolution. The last Griffith film to feature Lillian and Dorothy Gish, it is often considered Griffith’s last major commercial success, after box-office hits such as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Broken Blossoms. Buy a subscription… Read more →
Hoodoo Ann is a 1916 American comedy-drama silent film, written by D.W. Griffith, directed by Lloyd Ingraham and released by Triangle Film Corporation. Plot: Ann (Mae Marsh) is a young girl who has lived in an orphanage since infancy. She is disliked and spurned by the other children, and treated coldly by the orphanage administrators. She is told by the… Read more →
The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed and co-produced by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon Jr. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay (with Frank E. Woods), and co-produced the film (with Harry Aitken). It… Read more →
Dream Street is a 1921 American silent romantic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith, and starring Carol Dempster, Charles Emmett Mack, and Ralph Graves in a story about a love triangle set in London, and based on two short stories by Thomas Burke, “Gina of Chinatown” and “Song of the Lamp”. The cast also features Tyrone Power, Sr. The… Read more →
Abraham Lincoln, also released under the title D. W. Griffith’s “Abraham Lincoln”, is a 1930 Pre-Code biographical film about American president Abraham Lincoln directed by D. W. Griffith. It stars Walter Huston as Lincoln and Una Merkel, in her second speaking role, as Ann Rutledge. Her first speaking role was in a short film, Love’s Old Sweet Song (1923) filmed… Read more →
One Exciting Night is a 1922 American Gothic silent Mystery film directed by D. W. Griffith. The plot revolves around a series of murders on a wealthy estate and the attempts of the cast to uncover the murderer’s identity. The success of both the Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood play The Bat (1920), as well as the 1922 stage… Read more →
A Romance of Happy Valley is a 1919 American drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. Believed lost for almost 50 years, a print was discovered in 1965 in the State Film Archives of the Soviet Union, which donated it to the Museum of Modern Art. Plot: The senior John L. Logan (Fawcett) and his wife… Read more →
