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D.W. Griffith's French Revolution, a panoramic allegory against "anarchy and Bolshevism" that became a favorite of Eisenstein. The noblewoman's illegitimate daughter is left on snowy Notre Dame steps and raised by loving peasants, her mission as an adult (Lillian Gish) is to restore the sight of her adopted sister (Dorothy Gish). Misery and luxury in Paris, no bread for the people but fountains of wine for aristocrats, the honorable chevalier (Joseph Schildkraut) sees the writing on the wall: "Best enjoy our privileges while we can—there is but a short time left." The Marquis (Morgan Wallace) helps himself to the virginal maiden, the blind sister is scooped up by the scraggly gorgon (Lucille La Verne) and forced to beg in the streets. (The Dickensian strain is clinched early with a plebeian child trampled under a coach's wheels.) The historical vortex has Danton "the Abraham Lincoln of France" (Monte Blue) thundering fraternité, patting Robespierre (Sidney Herbert) on the head, crushing on Thomas Jefferson. "That's the kind of government we want here." Amidst the whirl of upheaval, Griffith's magnificent emotional coup: One Gish up on the balcony and the other down in the pavement, separated physically yet connected by a molten flow of frenzied feeling. Storming of the Bastille (empty alley gradually filled with revolutionaries as a drum beats in the corner), celebratory orgy, Reign of Terror. The vengeful servant (Leslie King) cuts quite a proto-Karloff figure, "a most fanatical judge" before the bloodthirsty crowd. Galloping pardon and plunging blade, with masking of the top and bottom of the screen to excite Gance's imagination and Fragonard for the closing composition. Eight decades later and there's Rohmer's L'Anglaise et le Duc with its own alchemy of visionary technique and reactionary philosophy. With Frank Losee, Katherine Emmet, Frank Puglia, Sheldon Lewis, Creighton Hale, and Louis Wolheim. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |