11. Orphans Of The Storm (1921)

Title: Orphans Of The Storm
Genre: Drama
IMDB User Score: 8.1/10 Stars
Year: 1921
Language: English
Format: Black & White, Silent
Length: 150 Minutes
Director: D.W. Griffith
Producer: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: D.W. Griffith, from the play Two Orphans by Eugéne Cormon and Adolphe d’Ennery
Photography: Paul H. Allen, G.W. Bitzer, Hendrik Sartov
Music: Louis F. Gottschalk, William F. Peters
Cast: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Frank Losee, Katherine Emmet, Morgan Wallace, Lucille La Verne, Sheldon Lewis, Frank Puglia, Creighton Hale, Leslie King, Month Blue, Sidney Herbert, Lee Kohlmar, Marcia Harris
Oscar: No
Oscar Nomination: No
Budget: ?
Revenue: ?
Reason it’s Worth Watching:

- The last highly successful film by D.W. Griffith, marking an end to the “Griffith Era”
- One of the very first nude scenes in a feature length film
- Considered by many to be the finest acting performance of either of the Gish sisters’ careers.
- Despite being a film with a very blatant anti-Bolshevik political message, this film was a key influence to famous Russian filmmakers Sergei M. Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin


The last D.W. Griffith film on the list also turns out to be the most accessible and entertaining of the bunch. Orphans Of The Storm (1921) stars the ever-present Lillian Gish and her sister Dorothy (who looks so much like her sister that it’s kind of creepy) as the titular orphans, who embark on an odyssey in the midst of the French Revolution. The plot revolves around Dorothy’s character, who becomes the victim of blindness as a result of a plague. Now entirely dependant upon her sister and with their parents dead, the two travel to Paris in search of a cure. Unfortunately, they show up at right about the same time the lower class of the city are overthrowing the aristocracy and plunging France into civil war. The two become separated in this “storm” and the adventure plays out from there, as they desperately try to reunite despite a series of ironic circumstances. The story is simple enough, but is surprisingly exciting to watch thanks to the natural empathy the Gish sisters are able to generate with the audience, and the direction of D.W. Griffith, who by this time had made a fine art out of filming large scale fight scenes.

This film is not without complaint though. For one thing, Griffith is back to being WAY too preachy. I mean, god damn, could he MAKE the moral message any more obvious? At the very opening of the film, there is a title card that describes the political climate in France at the time the film takes place. Then right after that there is a card that says something like “This barbarism is not unlike the barbaric acts we see in our modern world today, and if it is not stopped now, our country will surely succumb to the blah blah blah, etc, etc”. That’s not an exact quote, but the point is the film just straight up TELLS YOU what the parallel to modern society is. I mean, seriously. That’s not even bringing up the point that I’m here to watch a movie, not attend church. Griffith does this with several of his films, especially his historical epics, but I’m just mentioning it here because it was the most blatant in this movie. Also, I’m not sure why silent movies in general do this, but Griffith is definitely the worst offender: he’ll show maybe 40 seconds worth of people talking back and forth, then show a dialogue card with 5 words on it. This is not only horrible for pacing, but it makes the audience wonder what they’re REALLY saying and, more importantly, why they should care. Again, Griffith has this problem a lot, but when you compare to other movies of the early 20’s, you begin to notice that directors were starting to acquire a sense of pacing. Then you turn around and look at this film and you wonder what the director’s obsession with flapping gums is. I mean, they DO realize we can’t hear them, right?

Those problems aside, this is a really engaging film that’s very easy to like. The heroines are loveable, the heroes are dashing, the villains are enraging, and the action is romantic. Griffith was a groundbreaking director who made some legendary films, and those films deserve to be seen by any cinema lover. Orphans Of The Storm is no exception. If someone were to ask me what a good film would be to watch that gives a good sense of what a D.W. Griffith movie is like, I’d definitely recommend either this one or Broken Blossoms (1919). This movie is certainly the most “modern” feeling of all his works, and if you have the patience to sit and enjoy a silent movie to begin with, this is as good of a place to start as any.

10. Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage) (1921)

Title: Körkarlen (The Phantom Carriage)
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
IMDB User Score: 7.9/10 Stars
Year: 1921
Language: Swedish
Format: Black & White, Silent
Length: 93 Minutes
Director: Victor Sjöström
Producer: Charles Magnusson
Screenplay: Victor Sjöström, from a novel by Selma Lagerlöf
Photography: Julius Jaenzon
Music: Matti Bye (1998 restoration)
Cast: Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg, Astrid Holm, Concordia Selander, Lisa Lundholm, Tor Weijden, Einar Axelsson, Olof As, Nils Ahrén, Simon Lindstrand, Nils Elffors, Algot Gunnarson, Hildur Lithman, John Ekman.
Oscar: No
Oscar Nomination: No
Budget: ?
Revenue: ?
Reason it’s Worth Watching:

- Extremely advanced special effects for its time period, using a painstakingly long post-production method utilizing double exposures to create a 3D “ghost effect” that had never been seen before.
- A very sophisticated narrative style, using flashbacks within flashbacks to tell the film’s plot in a way no movie ever had up to that point.
- A very bold movie in that it stands up against censorship guidelines of its time period. The movie’s themes of mysticism and the occult would have been grounds to ban the film at the time, had the film not been so extraordinarily good.
- A HUGE influence on the famous director Ingmar Berman, who called it “the film of all films” and the main influence on his works.
- The famous “Here’s Johnny” scene in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), was a direct homage to this movie. The Shining is also very thematically similar to this film.

This is a COOL movie, first and foremost. The special effects are just insane for the time period, especially given how much manual labor was required to do it with 1920’s film equipment. One scene in particular that stands out for me is a scene early in the film where the titular phantom carriage travels from land onto the ocean seamlessly, and the driver then gets out and walks along the bottom of the ocean floor to reap the soul of a shipwreck victim found there. The fact that the ghosts in this movie can walk around the screen in 3 dimensions is even more incredible. For example, when a ghost walks behind a table, his legs actually go behind the table, instead of continuing to be seen. This might be something you’ll want to take for granted, but anyone who has seen the way film editing was done during the dawn of cinema will be scratching their heads as to how exactly this was achieved. I personally don’t even want to THINK of the editing process and how many layers of film were needed to create this movie. The post-production on it was infamously long, and the hard work shows in the quality of the movie.

They could have just made this an hour long visual experimentation flick and it’d still be considered a classic, but they didn’t just stop with the visuals. The storyline here is poetic, to say the least. Using a series of complex, yet very accessible flashback sequences, the movie is able to create dramatic irony in a way most films at the time would never be able to equal. The story isn’t really anything revolutionary; it’s basically A Christmas Carol, only with a grim reaper straight out of hell as opposed to three ghosts and about ten times as macabre. Our recently deceased protagonist goes on an odyssey; looking at his past sinful behavior, and seeing first hand the series of tragically ironic events they set off, causing misery, pain, and death for everyone around him. But it’s the way that the story is told that really makes it feel like something you’ve never seen before.

My only complaint with the film is that it has a bit of a deus ex machina ending. I think the film would have been much more powerful if things had followed through to their logical and terrible conclusion, rather than pulling the divine intervention card at the end. That aside, this is still a purely magical film. The atmosphere is fantastic, the story is gripping, and the production values are absolutely off the charts. Of special mention is the soundtrack that was added to the film’s restoration. The original film had no soundtrack, as music for it was always performed by live orchestras at theatres where it screened. The 1998 soundtrack that has been subsequently added to it is amazing. It’s this awesome industrial effect track that really adds to the film’s already overwhelming feeling of dread and despair. Movie lover or not, I would recommend this piece to just about anyone. It’s easily the most universally accessible silent film I’ve ever seen up to this point, and it’s easy to see why it has had such a long lasting effect on the industry.

9. Within Our Gates (1920)

Title: Within Our Gates
Genre: Drama, Romance
IMDB User Score: 6.4/10 Stars
Year: 1920
Language: English
Format: Black & White, Silent
Length: 79 Minutes
Director: Oscar Micheaux
Producer: Oscar Micheaux
Screenplay: Oscar Micheaux, Gene DeAnna
Photography: ?
Music: Philip Carli
Cast: Evelyn Preer, Flo Clements, James D. Ruffin, Jack Chenault, William Smith, Charles D. Lucas, Bernice Ladd, Mrs. Evelyn, William Stark, Mattie Edwards, Ralph Johnson, E.G. Tatum, Grant Edwards, Grant Gorman, Leigh Whipper
Oscar: No
Oscar Nomination: No
Budget: ?
Revenue: ?
Reason it’s Worth Watching:

- The earliest surviving film directed by an African-American filmmaker. This film holds immense historical value as the launching point for all of African-American cinema.
- The film was so controversial at the time, that it was cut up and edited extensively, due in large part to the 1919 Chicago race-riots. Most prints were destroyed, and the film was considered lost for 70 years until a lone print was discovered in Spain. No version of the movie exists that depicts the rape and lynching scenes as graphically as the director intended.
- Selected for preservation in the National Film Registry

First let me say that this film was damn hard to locate. I guess being completely lost; only to emerge 70 years later will do that to a film. Within Our Gates is an amazing piece of cinematic and cultural history. Born out of a direct response to The Birth of a Nation (1915) and the 1919 Chicago race-riots, this movie is a bleak portrayal of African-American life in the early 1900’s. The thing that probably surprised me the most about this movie was how logical it was. Unlike The Birth of a Nation, the situations seen in Within Our Gates aren’t very black and white (pun intended).

See, when you’re making a movie meant to elevate an entire race of people, it is very easy for a filmmaker to demonize other races in the process. Not so with this movie. In this film, there are good black people and bad black people, just as there are good white people and bad black people. One might take that for granted today, but looking at other “race films” of the era, its easy to see that this kind of open-minded outlook was a rarity at the time. This movie doesn’t ever really get preachy about how white people are keeping down black people. Instead, it shows how PEOPLE in general are keeping other people down. A white man murders another white man; both a black and a white criminal try and kill each other over a game of cards, and a black preacher scams his black congregation out of money, all within the course of this movie. This is something I greatly appreciate, because it repeals stereotypes and TRULY puts all races on EQUAL terms, instead of favoring one race over another.

As for the technical aspects of this movie…. well, they kind of suck. Due to the fact that this WAS a black man creating a film in the 1920’s, the budget he was given was abysmally low and it shows. Compared with the million dollar budgets of Griffith films, the cast number here is low, the cuts are choppy, and the environments are noticeably artificial. That doesn’t make the film hard to watch (I mean, you’re already watching a black and white silent film in 2010, a general drop in film quality should be kind of expected.), its just noticeable when coming off of films like Broken Blossoms (1919) that manage to be absolutely beautiful, despite the time period.

However, there is one scene late in the film that will leave an image in your head. That scene is the infamous lynching scene. Now, it’s not exactly “gory” per se, but this is a pretty graphic depiction of a ritualistic hanging. As someone who co-exists in the world with the Saw franchise, this definitely won’t induce any nausea, but you can see why some people went so far out of their way to try and ban this film. The film really does a good job of making the good ol’ white past time of hanging uppity Negroes look like a barbaric practice, and its understandable why southerners at the time would’ve taken offense. Really, I’d recommend this film just on the basis of culture alone. This is a rare gem of a movie that reveals the reality of an unfortunate period of our history, and the moral implications of society conveyed here are as relevant today as they ever have been.

8. Way Down East (1920)

Title: Way Down East
Genre: Drama, Romance
IMDB User Score: 8.1/10 Stars
Year: 1920
Language: English
Format: Black & White, Silent
Length: 100 Minutes
Director: D.W. Griffith
Producer: D.W. Griffith
Screenplay: Anthony Paul Kelly, Joseph R Grismer., D.W. Griffith, adapted from the play Way Down East by Joseph R. Grismer, William A. Brady and the play Annie Laurie by Lottie Blair Parker
Photography: Billy Bitzer, Hendrik Sartov
Music: Louis Silvers
Cast: Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Burr McIntosh, Kate Bruce, Mary Hay, Creighton Hale, Emily Fitzroy, Porter Strong, George Neville, Edgar Nelson
Oscar: No
Oscar Nomination: No
Budget: $700,000
Revenue: $5,000,000
Reason it’s Worth Watching:

- Has one of the most memorable climaxes of the silent era; a well shot climax, which features Griffith at his best when it comes to pacing. The climax is notable for ACTUALLY being shot on a treacherous semi-frozen river, with no safety devices. These dangerous filming conditions caused Lillian Gish to have a hand impairment the rest of her life, due to the cold damage.
- Some sequences of the film were shot with a very early form of Technicolor
- The 4th highest grossing silent film in history

Of all the Griffith films I have seen, this is ironically his simplest and most straight forward endeavor. I say ironically because it’s also one of his most popular. The film is based upon a late 1800’s play of the same name, which had become a dated story at the time of this film rendition. Griffith set out to modernize and re-invigorate the tale by using the magic of cinema. He succeeded thanks in large part to his camera men and the ever brilliant Lillian Gish.

This is not a groundbreaking film. The story is very straight forward and, while it deals with the slightly taboo subject of pre-marital sex and the resulting illegitimate children, it is nowhere NEAR as political as most of Griffith’s other movies. The movie is popular primarily because of the climax. Upon walking away from this movie, pretty much all there is to talk about, is that damn climax. The scene is impressive. Even by today’s standards, it’s pretty intense. The heroine, having just been banished from the household that most of the movie focuses around, runs out into a blizzard and passes out from exhaustion on a frozen river, which breaks apart and carries our heroine away on a slab of ice towards a raging waterfall (cut-away shots filmed courtesy of Niagara Falls). Our hero chases after her and daringly has to leap from ice slab to ice slab to rescue her. Really, this scene is pretty awesome. The fact that they pretty much ACTUALLY DID IT on a real river (albeit, with an artificial waterfall) makes it all the more impressive. The pacing and camera work are also worthy of much praise. The sequence is easily the earliest example I’ve seen of really GOOD dramatic build-up.

Beyond that, this movie is pretty basic. I mean, it’s definitely enjoyable, it just lacks the revolutionary feeling Griffith usually tries to bring to his movies. There are some mildly entertaining slap-stick characters, and a really dislikable villain. I could praise Lillian Gish’s performance, but it wouldn’t be anything I haven’t already said. She is just amazing. Her facial expressions are so good; it really makes stupid things like sound and dialogue feel unimportant. Basically, I would recommend this movie just to see what a 1920 blockbuster looks like. It’s funny to draw the parallel between then and now. Back then, really deep movies like Intolerance (1916) failed to live up to action filled movies like this; where as today, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) will be over-shadowed by Avatar (2009) every day of the week. It’s just pretty amusing how, if you really look at the first movies ever made, the audiences for them were really attracted to the same things audiences like today. Not that this is a bad thing. Steak is great, but every once and awhile, a guy really just wants a good cheeseburger.