D W Griffith (1921)
An ‘intermission card’ appeared on screen but there was no intermission to the BFI screening of Orphans of the Storm. Probably just as well: if there had been, we’d have thought twice about returning for the second half. But ‘Act II’, with the French Revolution underway then its aftermath, is much easier to watch – at least there are plenty of events for the human drama to play against. In Intolerance the balance between the epic and the personal dimensions of the story is impressively sustained by Griffith and both are powerful. Orphans of the Storm, in spite of the historically momentous context, is a relatively undistinguished melodrama (Griffith adapted a frequently staged nineteenth-century play, Les deux orphalines, by Adolphe D’Ennery and Eugène Cormon). Much of the action is like opera or ballet in that the extended pantomime for a single emotion or event can be infuriating. When the two separated siblings are nearly reunited – Henriette calling from an upstairs window to her blind sister Louise in the street below – you want Henriette to rush down immediately before she misses her chance. The time-consuming elaboration of her joy at seeing Louise again means that miss her chance is exactly what Henriette does.
Among the twists in the plot that I didn’t understand was the climactic one: how Danton persuades the revolutionary court to pardon Henriette and her sweetheart, the aristocratic Chevalier de Vaudrey, whom Robespierre has had sentenced to be guillotined. The longueurs and obscurities are frustrating because Lillian Gish is wonderful as Henriette, her sister Dorothy (Louise) and Joseph Schildkraut (de Vaudrey) are very fine too, and nearly all the significant characters are well cast and skilfully intepreted – Sidney Herbert (Robespierre), Creighton Hale (de Vaudrey’s valet, Picard) and Lucille La Verne (the old hag Mother Frochard) are especially vivid. Lillian Gish has both an extraordinary face and a quality of purity that is wonderfully natural: you’re also repeatedly struck by her physicality – for example, when Henriette berates Mother Frochard or when her body is limp after she’s saved from the guillotine in the nick of time. Joseph Schildkraut brings individuality to a stock character – it’s no surprise that he became such a good and successful actor in the sound area. Griffith’s cross-cutting is exciting in the climactic chase to deliver, to the place of their intended execution, the document that confirms Henriette and de Vaudrey’s pardon. The tinting of the print we saw looked very artificial, although this may well mirror the look of the original. Griffith’s moralising intertitles (his name appears at the bottom right-hand corner so you’re in doubt of their authorship) are often tiresome and are not always grammatical.
11 May 2013
