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.