Overall: MEH
Immediately proceeding the landmark, one-two punch of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance was his loose adaptation/hybrid of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart and "Annabel Lee". The Avenging Conscience, (Thou Shalt Not Kill), spends a scant couple of minutes indulging itself in macabre and nightmarish visuals, most of which come near the finish line. It qualifies as a horror film in a lax context, but despite Griffith's noticeable ability to stage a few moments of tightly-wound tension here or there, it is mostly a bore. Two lovers are initially thwarted to marry each other by the one's domineering uncle, (as was the style at the time), and for the most part, it is just a back and forth melodrama with people being in love and then being sad and being in love. We have some intertitles of Poe's writings thrown in, and the structure just repeats itself until some ghosts and ghouls finally show up. Though Griffith's eye was sharp and he was at the cusp of his creative peak at this point in his career, his powers are just utilized in a less compelling fashion than would be preferable.
Immediately proceeding the landmark, one-two punch of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance was his loose adaptation/hybrid of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart and "Annabel Lee". The Avenging Conscience, (Thou Shalt Not Kill), spends a scant couple of minutes indulging itself in macabre and nightmarish visuals, most of which come near the finish line. It qualifies as a horror film in a lax context, but despite Griffith's noticeable ability to stage a few moments of tightly-wound tension here or there, it is mostly a bore. Two lovers are initially thwarted to marry each other by the one's domineering uncle, (as was the style at the time), and for the most part, it is just a back and forth melodrama with people being in love and then being sad and being in love. We have some intertitles of Poe's writings thrown in, and the structure just repeats itself until some ghosts and ghouls finally show up. Though Griffith's eye was sharp and he was at the cusp of his creative peak at this point in his career, his powers are just utilized in a less compelling fashion than would be preferable.
(1922)
Overall: MEH
One of if not the first surviving old dark house movie, One Exciting Night is D.W. Griffith's entry into the sub-genre, and it bare several of the filmmaker's hallmarks for both better and worse. Griffith concocted the story himself, which closely adheres to the framework that was laid out in the stage plays The Bat and The Cat and the Canary, (both of which would get cinematic treatments around the same time), pitting his mystery around a family fortune that is hidden in a mansion where a masked killer is also roaming around. Being a Griffith movie, it is both laborious in length and prominently features white actors in black face playing unflattering African American stereotypes. We even get derogatory words and jive speak in the intertitles, just to make this age as poorly as any of Griffith's other works in his filmography from such an unfortunately racist perspective. Elsewhere, it is impressive in its fleshed-out narrative which while not the most engaging out there, at least spends more time than is necessary in emphasizing its barrage of characters who are more than just red herring fodder. It is also quickly edited, light in tone, and features fun things like a full-blown hurricane in its finale and elongated fingers casting their shadow on a house miniature in a few shots.
(1926)
Overall: MEH
D.W. Griffith's first film for Paramount Pictures, The Sorrows of Satan is an adaptation of Marie Corelli's 1895 novel of the same name, which had already been brought to the screen two times before. This also features the final screen performance from Griffith regular Carol Dempster who retired the same year and portrays the distraught love interest of Ricardo Cortez, a man who willfully sells his soul for money, power, and a taste of the good life. While Dempster is appropriately melodramatic when such things are called for, Cortez turns in a more wooden performance until the end, reacting as if his miraculous good fortune is about as exciting as rearranging his sock drawer. Speaking of which, Griffith was allegedly uninspired by the project as well, and his lack of enthusiasm shows since most of the film is flatly staged and cinematically sterile, save for an atmospheric finale and an impressive opening shot where Lucifer is banished from heaven by a swarm of angels and turned into his bat-winged form. Still, as far as silent era Faustian movies go, this one is too routinely bland to recommend, but at least Bauhaus got a memorable single cover out of it.
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