Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2006 Sommario / Contents

speranza, tutta americana, che i loro desideri possano avverarsi
semplicemente in virtù della loro onestà e intensità. Il film lascia
capire che tale mutua “fiduciosa aspettativa” alla fine dovrà
spezzarsi, affinché essi possano, almeno in parte, realizzarsi. – Tom
Gunning [DWG Project # 583]
There are those of us who consider True Heart Susie to be Griffith’s
masterpiece. A claim like this demonstrates perhaps the only reason for
using terms like “masterpiece” in this era so suspicious of canons, and
even of critical evaluations. Such a claim must be polemical, an
incitement to discussion and argument, rather than reinforcing the
received judgment of generations. But more importantly, in its superlative
claim to value, it indicates that such a discussion must involve an
emotional investment (read: passion) on the part of the critic, as much
as analytical demonstration. To be devoted to a film like True Heart
Susie has nothing to do with the institutional and long-term support of
cultural apparatuses that render literary canons suspect. But it does
involve narrative structure and point of view, as well as the fine details of
performance, framing, and even the use of intertitles that makes a
seemingly modest film such as this appear nearly incandescent in its
confessional and emotional power.
Sergei Eisenstein analyzed D.W. Griffith as a divided artist, accenting a
split between the modern, urban, fast-paced Griffith, and the traditional,
rural, and pastoral Griffith. True Heart Susie certainly belongs in the
latter group, but like all of Griffith’s pastoral features, the barrier
between a traditional and a modern world – and especially an urban and
rural world – has been breached, and this contamination supplies part
of the drama and tension of the film.As in Way Down East, A Romance
of Happy Valley, or even The White Rose, movement from the city to
the country and back carries tragic consequences for characters, as the
two worlds come into conflict in such a way that our heroes no longer
feel sure of the model of behavior they should follow. Interestingly in all
these films, characters (and the drama) must return to the country (the
time characters spend in the city in most of the films remains rather
brief in terms of screen time – although enormous in their
consequences).
But we might better characterize Griffith’s stylistics through a contrast
not simply between urban and rural, but between the epic and the
intimate (John Belton, in his insightful essay “True Heart Susie” (1983),
describes this split as between the epic and the lyrical;William Rothman,
in his fine essay “True Heart Griffith” (1988), makes a distinction
between epic and “intimate drama”). In my discussion of Intolerance in
volume 9 of The Griffith Project, I related these two modes of Griffith’s
narratives to the visual contrast between long shot and close-up.Although
this poses a great simplification of his narrative devices, I think it reveals
attitudes motivating Griffith’s framing. Received opinion often (falsely)
characterized Griffith as the father of the close-up. In his own mythmaking
through the advertisement he placed in trade journals when
leaving the Biograph Company in late 1913, Griffith emphasized that he
introduced not only “large or close-up figures” but also “distant views”.
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From the Biograph films on, Griffith used a variety of distant framings to
capture broad sweeps of action (Indian raids, Civil War battles, Sherman’s
March to the Sea, the Siege of Babylon), endowing his films with an epic
dimension. Close-ups, on the other hand, initially provided dramatic
emphasis in Biograph films, emphasizing small objects such as the bar of
soap with hidden jewels in Betrayed by a Handprint (1908) and the
monkey wrench in The Lonedale Operator (1911). But in his feature
films close-ups began to play more complex roles than magnification of
crucial small objects.
This sense of intimacy in Griffith does not derive only from close-ups,
but also from performances that make use of the close-ups. In True
Heart Susie, Lillian Gish’s face becomes a battleground of emotions,
expressing not simply a single essential emotion or reaction, but staging
complete and progressive dramas of realization, recognition, and
despair. Consider Gish’s close-up as Susie sees William and Bettina
embracing after Bettina accepts his proposal of marriage. Description in
words can only demonstrate the ungainly quality of language when
posed against the natural expressivity of the face, but, in the interest of
directing the viewer’s attention (or memory) to the moment, I will risk
the offense. Gish first appears thoughtful: her eyes focused down as her
hand mounts to her ear, which she fingers almost abstractly as if
considering an intellectual puzzle. Then she laughs a bit, perhaps
recognizing the absurdity of her long-term unspoken love, or perhaps
momentarily convinced she has mistaken what she has seen. She looks
off toward the couple briefly, then her eyes widen and her little finger
begins to play with her lower lip as her smiles fades. She looks off left
again more intently, her finger now in her mouth.Then her head wavers
uncertainly, her eyes widen as she looks towards the camera, as if on
the verge of fainting.
Throughout True Heart Susie performance, editing, and narration
create a point of view through which we profoundly share the
experiences of the characters. However, this sharing involves more (or
less) than strict identification. For Griffith, sharing an intimacy also means
being aware of a certain distance, which occasionally we can cross into
an emotional nearness.Thus, in True Heart Susie we profoundly share
Susie’s story and indeed become very close to her, a bit in the way Susie
must become close to Bettina when she lets her share her bed in spite
of her anger at her for deceiving William, in spite of her envy of her for
possessing the one thing Susie loves and not valuing it. Nearness and
intimacy mean overcoming a distance that one is fully aware of.
Thus, although we share Susie’s story and care about her heartbreak, we
do not share her naïveté.We are always one jump ahead of her, realizing
all the things she doesn’t: William’s vanity and lack of insight into the
world around him, Susie’s own lack of forthrightness in claiming what
should be hers.The illusions both she and William have about the way
the world operates – often referred to in the intertitles as their “faith” –
reflecting a peculiarly American foolish expectation that their desires will
be met, simply because they are earnest and intense.The film makes it
clear that such “faith” must be broken in the end, if they are to find any
fulfillment at all. – TOM GUNNING [DWG Project # 583]
GRIFFITH