Tol'able David

David and Goliath in West Virginia, a pastoral that turns Gothic. Greenstream Valley, dappled sunshine on vast rural expanses for "the appearance of old serenity." The runt of the family litter, the eponymous lad (Richard Barthelmess) rattles in the farmhouse, impatiently waiting for his turn at masculine responsibility. (Wearing a barrel after his dog makes off with his pants, he naturally bumps into the neighboring belle, Gladys Hulette.) "Trouble like the shadow of a black cloud" intrudes in the shape of a brutal clan of proto-Faulkner cretins, particularly a hulking ogre (Ernest Torrence) whose "particular humor" involves crushing kittens. Tragedy strikes and Henry King stages an arresting tableau—older brother (Warner Richmond) paralyzed in bed, wife (Patterson Dial) rocking compulsively with their newborn in her arms, father (Edmund Gurney) methodically reaching for musket. The hero's vengeance is postponed, "they'd mow you down like a clump of daisies!" Violence in the garden as a tragic path into manhood, a detailed study in Griffithian theme and technique. Idyllic landscapes, deep space measured across the screen with winding roads traversed by the characters, the sort of leisurely respect for the wholeness of the image that can charm even a montage advocate like Pudovkin. (A stray modernist bit has David like Buster Keaton outside the hall gazing at dancing couples in the makeshift movie screen that is an illuminated window.) The giant's mouth twitches memorably before the battle, a little joke caps the closing Pietà, "just tol'able." The influence extends from How Green Was My Valley and High Noon to Straw Dogs and Last House on the Left. With Marion Abbott, Walter P. Lewis, Ralph Yearsley, Forrest Robinson, Laurence Eddinger, and Henry Hallam. In black and white.