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This was a nifty surprise. A major Griffith film (a flop in its day) I had not seen.

Carol Dempster stars as Inga, a Polish refugee in Germany after WW I. She lives with a family whose son (Neil Hamilton) has been gassed during the war. Family member try to find work as they slowly starve. The family is given a plot of land for growing vegetables (a government program) and the climax of the film occurs during harvest time.

I thought this was a terrific film, with Dempster giving a touching performance. She has a Gish moment when, thinking she is too gaunt from starving, fleshes out her cheeks with cotton balls.

Lupino Lane has a nice comic-relief part.

The original music by Louis Silvers and Cesare Sodero is beautifully played by Robert Israel on piano and Galina Golovin on violin.

To me, THIS is Griffith's masterpiece. Of course, BoaN, Intolerance, and Broken Blossoms are fabulous, but this is great, great, great. Remember, too, that several of those breadline scenes were filmed for real. That's what I think is the most astonishing thing. Yes, a great film. I've watched it many times, and every time I see something I missed the time before. Several of the breadline scenes have things going on that you don't see the first time. Watch it again, you'll see what I mean.

Apparently this was Griffith's last film as an independent. His Long Island studio was sold after this film flopped.

The long scene where Dempster has cash in her hand and waits in a long line outside a butcher shop is quite memorable.

Also the scene where Dempster and Hamilton pull that damned big wagon is terrific and builds a good deal of suspense.

drednm wrote:Apparently this was Griffith's last film as an independent. His Long Island studio was sold after this film flopped.

The long scene where Dempster has cash in her hand and waits in a long line outside a butcher shop is quite memorable.

Also the scene where Dempster and Hamilton pull that damned big wagon is terrific and builds a good deal of suspense.

All of you have a much higher TTCD (Tolerance Towards Carol Dempster) quotient than I have.

Lokke Heiss wrote:

drednm wrote:Apparently this was Griffith's last film as an independent. His Long Island studio was sold after this film flopped.

The long scene where Dempster has cash in her hand and waits in a long line outside a butcher shop is quite memorable.

Also the scene where Dempster and Hamilton pull that damned big wagon is terrific and builds a good deal of suspense.

All of you have a much higher TTCD (Tolerance Towards Carol Dempster) quotient than I have.

Having seen this at Pordenone a couple of years back, I have to say that while I agree wholeheartedly about Miss Dempster in all the other films I've seen her in - which I believe is all her work with DWG - this film is both a before-its-time masterpiece, and revelatory; she performs so well in it that I can forgive her simpering performances elsewhere. If it was an early film from, say, King Vidor, it would be better known and more highly rated. Being a 'late' Griffiths has meant, I think, that it's been overlooked.

Just watched this great movie from old VHS. Where is the DVD release?

This is one of my favorite Griffiths. Although the story is gloomy, Griffith makes it a charming and touching drama. Carol Dempster makes her finest performance and Neil Hamilton is great too. In fact there are no weak performances or weak characters (like the silly professor in Way Down East). The movie is beautifully cinematographed by Hendrik Sartov and Harold S. Sintzenich. It is hard to imagine that anything could be done better in this movie.

Well, intertitles could maybe be better. Like in every other Griffith movies, titles are sometimes too long and sometimes even banal. But if you are used to Griffith’s intertitles, there will be no problem.

I'm glad to see a mostly positive response to this great Griffith film. It's a haunting film that deserves a wider audience.

I liked Dempster in Sally of the Sawdust although she didn't make much of an impression in Sherlock Holmes. I did not like her performance in The White Rose, but then the print is so bad it's hard to tell exactly what the quality of acting is (and where is the pristine, hand-tinted print of this film I've read about?).

I have not yet watched Dream Street, America or The Sorrows of Satan although I have had copies for a long time. I don't remember her at all in True Heart Susie.

There was a very nice print shown of The White Rose shown the same year as 'Wonderful', but don't recall hand tinting....or did you just mean tinted& toned? I thought CD was pretty awful in that, but then she had a fairly thankless task as the 'star' of a subplot that was both long-winded, and entirely redundant. I would have been quite happy if it went; IMHO The White Rose would be a better film without it, and the film concentrating on the Novello/Marsh story, which was well acted and moving; I was always impatient to get back to it when Dempster was onscreen.....

I had read somehwere that the original copy of The White Rose was hand tinted, as opposed to applying an overall tint, in soft pinks and greens. I assume this meant the tinting was selective and not applied to the whole film.

I agree the Dempster role here was not a very good one. I'm not sure any other actress could have made it interesting. Griffith likely saw it as a Dorothy Gish-type role but it didn't work.

This is exaggerating of course, but sometimes I feel that I am the only Griffith fan here in Finland. I think people here feel Griffith is old-fashioned, if they even know him. So it’s always nice to hear that somebody else likes his movies too.

I have seen Dream Street and I think it’s poor. But like you said above about The White Rose, the print was so bad that it was hard to watch. In America Carol Dempster acted quite well, but the movie itself was a bit disappointing. The first half was good and the war scenes were excellent, but the love story was weak. And the climax was like remake of The Birth of a Nation. Surprisingly, I think that Lionel Barrymore gave the best performance in this film.

The Sorrows of Satan is a movie I have wanted to see for a very, very long time. I think it was shown here in Finland about 5-7 years ago (I’m not sure) but I missed it then.

I haven’t seen The White Rose either. But I noticed that there is a DVD release of it at Amazon.com (The Directors: Rare Films Of D.W. Griffith As Director Vol. 4 / Classic Video Streams). I’m quite sure that the quality is bad, but could somebody tell me more?

drednm wrote: I have not yet watched Dream Street, America or The Sorrows of Satan although I have had copies for a long time. I don't remember her at all in True Heart Susie.

Dream Street is just plain terrible, and it isn't all Dempster's fault- the movie is a steaming pile of sentimental mush.

Murnau wrote:I haven’t seen The White Rose either. But I noticed that there is a DVD release of it at Amazon.com (The Directors: Rare Films Of D.W. Griffith As Director Vol. 4 / Classic Video Streams). I’m quite sure that the quality is bad, but could somebody tell me more?

Unfortunately it's the same very difficult to watch transfer with all the faces whited out.

What a shame the print is so lousy.....

I just found copies of Dempster's One Exciting Night and The Girl Who Stayed Home.

I just watched this one last night with my girlfriend. We enjoyed it well enough, and for the most part I liked the bleak tone. It never quite grabbed me in the way I was hoping it would though. I find Weimar era Germany fascinating and enjoyed the authenticity of the settings, but the film felt somehow incomplete. Not enough despair perhaps, and I thought the backdrop of the profiteers and the union of laborers could have been fleshed out better. The performances of the actors were universally strong.

It never reaches the heights that Die Freudlose Gasse reaches. But there isn't much out there that does.

One question arose during the viewing, my girlfriend kept insisting that during the climax Paul and Inga shouldn't have been hauling a wagon full of potatoes through the forest particularly after they were accosted on their way to harvest. So can anyone explain why they were hauling them through the forest? Was it simply to sell or was it to eat? Or was it simply a plot contrivance to build tension?

I wish to point out that it was quite absurd to show "Polish" refugees fleeing to inflation-ridden Postwar Weimar Germany, - of all countries!-, while Poland in fact had annexed large pieces of Prussia and Upper Silesia, where violent fights carried on until the Twenties. The refugees from mainly West Prussia (the famous "corridor") arriving at that time numbered by several 100,000s and were actually (and naturally) nothing else but ethnic Germans. I have read somewhere that Griffith had changed the protagonists to "Poles" due to still-lingering anti-German resentment in the US. I mean "Inga" is obviously not even a Polish name. This change is as opportunistic as it is dishonest and quite flawed the film for me.

I see that at least some IMDB commentators got this straight...

The main characters are Germans who had lived in land previously part of the old Germany--now part of Poland. They moved back to their ethnic homeland and settled into an impoverished Berlin. This sensitivity towards America's former enemy actually mirrored the change in attitude in general in the US, as people were now reassessing their role in the war and many felt, in hindsight, that we should have just stayed neutral.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015018/

Einar the Lonely wrote:Poland in fact had annexed large pieces of Prussia and Upper Silesia,

While I agree with a lot of the things you say, you cannot speak of an annexation here, as there was no Poland before 1919. The Versailles treaty (re-)created a Polish state where there had been none before (since it had been split up at the Vienna Congress in 1815). The victorious allies used parts of Germany to create this old/new country, but you can't speak of Poland annexing anything before it even came into existence.

I'm trying to remember... maybe only Carol Dempster, who was an orphan, came from Poland to live with the family in Germany? I don't think she was related since she was "dating" the son, Neil Hamilton.

I hadn't really thought about Poland as a country when I was watching this since its history is so complicated. I knew an old German woman who came from Danzig (Gdansk) but never identified with Poles and yet Danzig has often been its own country.... was that what they called the Polish Corridor?

I'll have to do some research...

drednm wrote: Danzig has often been its own country.... was that what they called the Polish Corridor?

After the Versailles Treaty Danzig/Gdansk was neither Polish nor German, it was a "free town" under League of Nations mandate at one side of the Polish Corridor. This was where the Second World war started, when the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein fired its guns at the town.

While I agree with a lot of the things you say,you cannot speak of an annexation here, as there was no Poland before 1919.

Well, an (during the wartime not-quite) "independent" Polish state had been declared by 1916 by the Central Powers, and became finally a republic in November 1918, with General Pilsudski in charge. The Prussian province Posen/Poznán had been occupied by uprising troops months before the Versailles Treaty was signed ...

I knew an old German woman who came from Danzig (Gdansk) but never identified with Poles and yet Danzig has often been its own country.... was that what they called the Polish Corridor?

Danzig had a 95% German population by 1919. Thats the reason why it was excluded from the "corridor", that consisted basically in the (ethnically mixed) West Prussia, that separated Germany from the province East Prussia, making it a territorial exclave. That situation, though under different historical conditions, already existed during times of the early 18th century Kingdom of Prussia, until Poland was split up by Russia, Prussia and Austria, and disappeared as a souvereign state from the map until 1918.

Watched Brownlow and Gill's doc on Griffith today, and the bit they did on this film explains the German vs Polish thing. Originally the family was German, dealing with inflation etc. But Griffith got pissed over some current political thing between France and Germany, so he, at the last minute, changed the family to Polish immigants.

I see I'm out in left field here but I've always thought this film was dreadful. I don't recall ever seeing Dempster in a film that I liked and just becuz Griffith had the hots for her didn't make her a decent actress.

But then, I've never cared much for depressing films. And Isn't Life is a depressing film.

Griffith was undoubtedly a great director and made some outstanding films in their day but I sometimes wish that he hadn't moralized quite so much.