Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2005 Sommario / Contents

his cast apparently experienced the wartime attacks on London as
preparations for their performances in Hearts.
Despite the prologue’s emphasis on location shooting in France, Griffith
seems to have spent only two more weeks in France, during the autumn,
and the only cast member who joined him there was Lillian Gish.They shot
footage around the village of Ham, on the Somme, which Richard Schickel
considers to be the only French location identifiable in the film. In October
the group returned to the United States, and by November the cast
assembled in California for the principal filming in sets. During the leadup
to the filming, Griffith acquired some documentary footage of the
fighting, which he spliced into his battle scenes. December saw a return
to a frantic shooting schedule that probably recalled to many the days of
the Biographs. Griffith began editing in January of 1918. Hearts
premiered in April and went on to make a $600,000 profit – a success
cut short in part by the Armistice and in part by the great flu epidemic of
1918-1919 (on the film’s production and release, see Richard Schickel,
D.W. Griffith, pp. 340–360).
Schickel has commented on how unrealistic Griffith’s war scenes are:
action, movement, and “sweeping movement” – not the grueling, static
trench warfare that most of the fighting actually involved. He comments
that the Boy’s two days in a shell hole come closest to that reality. In that
scene, however, one has to ask what the Boy could learn after two days
there that would allow him to know when to signal for the attack to begin.
That one exception aside, however, Griffith’s lack of realism in depicting
the war goes against his attempt to achieve authenticity by including
scenes shot in France. Despite the usually seamless combination of
English, French, and American-shot footage, Hearts remains as
conventional in its depiction of war as the other WWI films made entirely
in Hollywood.
I have suggested that Griffith moved from the experimentation of his two
great mid-1910s features to a sudden conservatism of film style.This was
paralleled by an old-fashioned approach to story. Schickel also remarks on
how clichéd and implausible the non-military scenes of Hearts are, with
Griffith trapped in stage melodrama, repeating the simplified and familiar
notion of threatened rape standing in for the general horrors of war. Of
course The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance had many melodramatic
and outdated scenes, but they seem to fade into the background in the
face of daring techniques. In Hearts of the World, the most impressive
moments are usually those quiet scenes that recall the best of Griffith’s
Biographs.
And the strengths of Hearts are definitely in its individual scenes, for the
mechanics of the plot progression are clunky. The opening exposition
introduces the characters at great length without setting up the sorts of
goals and expectations that were becoming part of current Hollywood
plotting. One need only look at the Douglas Fairbanks films being directed
at this time by John Emerson and Allan Dwan to realize how lively the
introduction of salient story information early in a film could be. Even in
comparison with Griffith’s own exposition at the beginning of Birth, that
of Hearts seems careless.There are almost no dialogue titles – something
that continues to be characteristic of Griffith films well into the 1920s, at
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a time when a preponderance of dialogue titles was rapidly replacing
expository titles as the Hollywood norm.
Hearts is also plagued by Griffith’s predilection for very short scenes,
often only a shot or two.The first reasonably skillful sustained Griffithian
sequence comes after the title THE LITTLEST ONE OF THE BOY’S THREE
BROTHERS IS INCLINED TO HERO-WORSHIP.This leads directly into the
first major love scene, introduced by another title, AFTERNOON. SHE
READS HIS VERSE OF LOVE – DEATHLESS, UNENDING. Here the Boy
observes her as she toys with a rose and reads his poetry.Throughout this
action, however, there is no real conflict introduced.The Boy is attracted to
the Girl, she loves him, and there seems to be no misunderstanding or
other barrier to their romance. Even the introduction of The Little
Disturber (i.e., the Singer played by Dorothy Gish) simply allows her to
show off something of her character and to meet Monsieur Cuckoo, her
befuddled suitor.
An astonishingly long way into the film, the scene in which the Singer
encounters the Boy in the street introduces some dramatic conflict.
Significantly, this is also the first scene to begin without an expository
intertitle.We are at last left without guidance to observe for ourselves the
characters’ actions and infer their motives.The scene itself is staged partly
in depth along a sidewalk by a long stone wall and specifically in front of
the door to the Boy’s home. The scene contains the film’s first real
shot/reverse-shot conversation and creates a lively dramatic interest for
the first time as the Singer’s flirtation with the Boy develops.There is even
a parallel created to the earlier scene of the Boy observing the Girl in the
garden. There he had ogled her ankle, and he does the same with the
Singer here – though in a more shy and confused manner.
Even after this scene, however, the plodding exposition resumes, with the
introduction of Von Strohm, the villainous German spy, and his relationship
to the treacherous woman who runs the local village inn. Interestingly,
however, the lengthy exposition ends with a scene between Von Strohm
and the Girl that parallels the flirtation between the Boy and the Singer.
Again the scene takes place on a sidewalk along a lengthy wall, centering
around a doorway. Von Strohm notices the Girl, and as with the Boy’s
interest in both the Girl and the Singer, his attraction to her is conveyed
by his glance at her ankle. Just as the Singer presents a comic threat to
the Boy’s romance with the Girl,Von Strohm now creates a more serious
threat to that romance. A really striking touch comes at the end of this
scene, as the Girl shuts the door in the German’s face, but he places his
buttonhole carnation in a knothole and pushes it through toward her with
the tip of his cane. This recalls the Girl’s rose in the love scene in the
garden, but at the same time it is a bizarre, enigmatic gesture, perhaps
suggesting defiance, perhaps seduction. A quick fade emphasizes this
uncertainty.
With this gesture we can say that the film’s lengthy exposition ends.The
first truly sustained and well-handled scene occurs next, beginning with
the title PERSEVERANCE AND PERFUME.The Singer and the Boy meet
again in the street outside his door. As she flirts with him again and tries
to provoke him to kiss her, a single cutaway signals that the Girl is nearby,
shopping.A medium-long shot along the wall places the Singer and Boy in
GRIFFITH