Audience Member
Hearts of the World just showed that D. W. Griffith is lacking originality and creativity since the plot and characters are just a rip-off of one of Griffith's more famous films The Birth of a Nation. Despite the visual effects being it's only good quality, Hearts of the World has a lot of bad writing and lacked any creative thought whatsoever. Hearts of the World is nothing more than a propaganda piece.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This is boring....I respect what Griffith did for film, but this is a boring movie.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
"God help the nation that begins another war of conquest or meddling!" So
reads the opening title of this rarely-seen but incredibly powerful war
drama produced, written and directed by D.W. Griffith in 1918.
The beauty and power of Griffith's moving 1918 anti-war epic is in his focus
on the individuals touched by war. Griffith is not so much interested in
telling us a story as such, but rather in conveying great themes and ideas
through characters who represent good and evil through their actions toward
each other. Here, he focuses on Marie Stephenson (played to perfection by
Lillian Gish), a French girl in love with an American, Douglas Gordon
Hamilton (Robert Harron), an aspring writer living in France with his
parents and three younger brothers. Griffith takes his time setting up
peaceful, serene shots of the French village, emphasizing the wide array of
people, each with their distinct traits. We also meet the "Little Disturber"
(a typically feisty Griffith heroine, played very well by Dorothy Gish), who
will later play a very important role in the film's climax. There are
charming domestic scenes, not unlike those of the Cameron household in "The
Birth of a Nation", which emphasizes the importance of home and family to
these characters, the destruction of which later on is portrayed in
devastating detail.
Marie meets Douglas in his garden one morning, as she is playing with geese
wandering around in the back yard. (We see another one of Griffith's
favorite visual touches-the female protagonist playing with animals, usually
geese or ducks.) The two become romantically involved, and are engaged to be
married when war is declared, just after Douglas has received a letter from
a publisher interested in his new manuscript. Douglas enlists in the
military, however, (a title describes his decision to defend France as "land
good enough to live in is good enough to fight for") and in an absolutely
heart-wrenching scene, Marie packs up her clothes, including the wedding
gown she never got to wear, putting her dreams away. Griffith's emotional
manipulation still works very well, because I confess I found myself moved
to tears during this scene. It's so effective because of Gish's complete and
utter conviction in playing the role. Watching the film, we don't see an
actress playing a part. Gish manages to convince us that she, herself, is
making these sacrifices. And Harron's beautifully understated performance is
one of the finest from this period. He conveys a sadness in his eyes that
reminds me of Laurence Olivier's performance in William Wyler's "Carrie"
(another film that left me emotionally devastated). His scenes with the
younger brothers, especially the youngest-who worships the ground he walks
on-are especially moving and even unsettling, because it conveys so well
how, if anything were to happen to Harron during the war, it would tear the
family apart.
The remainder of the film is handled in a quite interesting manner. Griffith
alternates scenes taken at the front, with scenes of the people back home.
He is going after no particular narrative drive here, but rather to heighten
the emotional intensity and connection with the characters-as-people by
focusing in great detail on their lives. There are some particularly
devastating shots of the small town being bombed out, with villagers fleeing
in panic, and shots of the geese we saw earlier in the film swimming through
a lake which erupts with explosions from shells.
At this point, I have to admit I found the film difficult to handle
emotionally. I've never been so moved by the depiction of war on-screen as I
was by this film, although there are a few moments in other films that have
come close. I decided to keep watching, because at this point I was also
reminded of just how compelling and gripping Griffith manages to make every
one of these characters, so that you quite literally feel that you want to
know what happens to them, for better or worse.
Douglas decides to come in to the town to meet with Marie at the local inn.
He makes his way through a German trench, disguising himself as a German
soldier, and manages to make his way to town.
Griffith does introduce the film's "heavy", a German named Von Strohm,
played to perfection by George Siegmann (who surely played some of the most
truly vile and despicable villains of the silent screen). Siegmann is a fine
actor who brings a genuine sense of menace to his performances. Here, he
sets up shop in a local tavern in the village, in which Marie and the
"Little Disturber" are both working. Incidentally, it's interesting to point
out that Erich von Stroheim delivers a brief but effective performance as
Von Strohm's aide. Just in these very brief scenes, Stroheim infuses his
character with a very real villainy that would have perhaps been better
suited to the Von Strohm character than Siegmann's broad performance.
Douglas arrives at the inn, which is infested with German soldiers and
officers looking for him. The "Little Disturber" detains Von Strohm while
Marie and Douglas hole up in one of the deserted rooms at the top of the inn
after Marie kills a German officer. Von Strohm eventually locates them and
is determined to kill them both himself. Here we begin a typical Griffith
climax, with a proverbial "ride to the rescue", here represented by the
progressing French and British forces moving in to reclaim the town. Marie
and Douglas debate whether or not to take their own lives as they are sure
death is coming. The troops arrive just in time, however, and the "Little
Disturber" saves the two by throwing a grenade into the gathering of German
officers right outside the door. With the town now back under the control of
the Allies, Marie and Douglas are married.
His film has an immediacy lacking in many war pictures, which is heightened
by a short prologue of behind-the-scenes footage of Griffith visiting the
trenches, where he shot second unit footage for the film, newsreel-style.
It's difficult to imagine any American filmmaker undertaking such a project
today. In the prologue, we see Griffith personally shooting scenes in a
trench while shells pass overhead. The picture was clearly made for the war
effort, and the ending seems to overlook the fact that, despite the
temporary glory of reclaiming the town, the impacts of the war will continue
to be felt for many decades. We can forgive it's rather overly-optimistic
ending, however, because Griffith has laid out his real message of the
brutal and horrific effects of fighting on every day people in the preceding
two hours of the film.
The film is not discussed as often as Griffith's other major work from this
period, falling between the epic "Intolerance" and the sublime "Broken
Blossoms", the film's mix of intimate character drama against an epic
background is an interesting approach that only heightens its power to move,
even close to a century after it was made. It's message is, of course,
timeless.
Griffith was an artist the likes of which the cinema has not quite yet seen
again. That is because everyone is still, in one way or another, working in
his "shadow", so to speak. The models of filmmaking that he perfected, and
the grammar of screen language that he gave us, are still so prevalent that
it's impossible to fully divorce "contemporary" filmmaking, as it exists
now, from what Griffith was doing in 1918. His vision extended beyond the
medium itself, launching a fledgling technology into an art form to stand
alongside the other arts. "Hearts of the World", a relatively minor Griffith
film, compared to his better-known works, is a testament to that vision.
The copy of "Hearts of the World" that I viewed derived from a Killiam Shows
print, available on VHS from Republic Pictures Home Video. This copy
contains tinting and a nice piano score by William Perry. The restoration
was performed by Karl Malkames. This video edition contains the original
newsreel prologue, showing Griffith at work in the trenches and meeting with
Prime Minister David Lloyd George. While the video itself is out of print,
copies can probably still be located online or through independent outlets.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
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