Ist das Leben nicht wunderbar?

After "The Great War" (later called "World War I"), unfortunately orphaned Carol Dempster (as Inga) goes to Germany, with an also-on-the-move homeless Polish family. There, she waits for handsome soldier Neil Hamilton (as Paul), childhood sweetheart from her "adopted" family. So, living virtuously must have been difficult for the couple, since they grew up together. Presently, Ms. Dempster and Mr. Hamilton find their changes for happiness averted by devastating post-war conditions…

Absent collaborators G.W. Bitzer, Robert Harron, and Lillian Gish might have given director D.W. Griffith another masterpiece with "Isn't Life Wonderful". His closest film-making partner was, by now, protégée Dempster. One of the problems with Dempster is evident herein - note the scene where she forces herself to "smile" while Mr. Hamilton is bedridden; this acting business is swiped from Ms. Gish's "smile" in "Broken Blossoms" (1919); and, Hamilton is directed to act like Mr. Harron.

This doesn't mean Dempster and Hamilton aren't adequate in the parts - but one of Mr. Griffith's problems was pigeonholing an actress like Dempster into something she was not. Griffith directed a "type" - the old lady, the mother, the virginal heroine, the suitor, etc. Herein, he is obviously directing his cast to act like the "types" co-created with performers like Gish and Harron; and, he incorrectly assumes one performer (Dempster) is able to deliver the same kind of performance as another (Gish).

This thematically beautiful film was said to be Griffith's apology for his ostensibly pro-War and necessarily anti-German "Hearts of the World" (1918, with Harron and Gish). But, Griffith apologists should have looked at "Hearts" more closely, and beat a hasty retreat; because, the turnaround began within that film. Like a war weary world, Griffith foresaw a pacifist mood. He knew how to be both ahead of the curve and behind the times; pulling no punches, "Isn't Life Wonderful" serves up blistering pessimistic optimism.

******* Isn't Life Wonderful (11/23/24) D.W. Griffith ~ Carol Dempster, Neil Hamilton, Lupino Lane, Frank Puglia

Director D. W. Griffith was with United Artists since its founding in 1919. However, by 1924, after a year of not producing any blockbusters, his partners decided the film pioneer and their UA studio should part company. The irony of the departure's timing is Griffith directed in what today is considered his last great masterpiece, November 1924's "Isn't Life Wonderful."

As great as the film is, "Isn't Life Wonderful" had a difficult time finding an audience. The public just wasn't interested in seeing a Polish refugee family painfully trying to exist in an economically dysfunctional Germany. The postwar country was experiencing an inflationary monetary system never seen before, with its marks currency escalating literally by the minute. Fatigue, hunger and crime greeted its citizens after its defeat against the Allied countries, especially France, demanding Germany keep up with its reparations for its invasion in 1914. Griffith, reading Geoffrey Moss' account of the German's life in his series of 1923 short stories, decided to produce a movie based on one of them. To make his production appear even more authentic, he took his crew and actors to film in Germany and Austria .

The often-criticized actress Carol Dempster, a favorite of Griffith after Lillian Gish left his fold, has been particularly praised here as showcasing a credible performance as the orphan Inga. Her fictitious character had grown up with the Polish family before their immigration to Germany. Griffith changed the citizenship of the film's central figures from German to Polish, knowing American viewers would be more apt to sympathize with them than the German populace.

The movie's male love interest, Paul (Neil Hamilton), suffering from a mustard attack in the war, has a twinkle in the eye for Inga, even though he's hobbled by the injury. In the one dramatic scene that "Isn't Life Wonderful" is known for, Inga stands patiently in a long queue in front of a butcher's shop after pooling the family's money for some long-desired meat. As the minutes tick by, the store owner repeatedly steps out to the blackboard and changes the escalating price of the meat, so much so that the money Inga has in her hand becomes inadequate. Incidentally, actor Hamilton, who had a long career in over 260 films, is recognizable today as the police commissioner in the 1960's 'Batman" TV series.

A disclaimer that appears at the beginning of this film may strike latter-day viewers as oddly worded. We're told first that we're going to see a tale of love triumphing over adversity, but then a second title card asserts that "the story is laid in Germany only because conditions there were most favorable for showing the triumph of love over hardship." The tone is unmistakably defensive, for director D.W. Griffith must have known that a story set in Berlin and focused on the desperate struggles of its defeated populace might not go over well in the U.S., or the other nations of the former Alliance. Six years after the end of the Great War there was still considerable hostility towards the Germans, which might explain why the characters at the center of Isn't Life Wonderful are presented as Polish refugees who have resettled in Copenick, a suburb of Berlin. Griffith adapted his screenplay from a short story by Geoffrey Moss, an Englishman and veteran who lived in Germany after the war, and was appalled by the suffering he observed among the common people. It is to the credit of both Moss and Griffith that they were able to put aside wartime chauvinism and sympathize with the plight of the former enemy, even if Griffith felt it necessary to blur the nationality of his fictional family. Plenty of Americans, Britons, French, and others were indifferent to severe conditions in Germany at this time, or if anything felt that the Huns had it coming. Griffith couldn't have expected a box office bonanza from this bleak drama nor did he get one, but he was courageous to make the film at this point in history, and it stands today as his best work of the period.

We follow the daily life of an average, beleaguered family (a professor, his wife and mother-in-law, their sons, and an adopted daughter) as they struggle to feed themselves, find work, and survive. Inga, the daughter, is an orphan who is in love with Paul, a veteran who comes home from the war with lungs damaged by mustard gas. In these early scenes the pacing is very slow, and everyone appears to be dazed. This feels dramatically appropriate, but also signals viewers that this film isn't going to be an easy ride, and that we'll need to adjust our expectations accordingly. As we get to know the characters we share in their setbacks and triumphs. Eventually, as Paul and Inga plan to get married and move into a small cottage we want to see their plans succeed, but feel anxious about their prospects. Paul is allotted a piece of land and manages to grow a modest-sized crop of potatoes, and we are given to understand that the couple's future hinges on the income that results. But we also know that food is scarce in Berlin, and that gangs of hungry men have been roaming the countryside attacking profiteers and taking their produce. As Paul and Inga haul their potatoes through the woods in a cart we fear for their safety, and their confrontation with the gang makes for a genuinely suspenseful climax. The film ends on a hopeful note, but the over all picture of post-war German society is grim.

When critics and historians speak of D.W. Griffith's artistic decline in the 1920s they often cite his insistence on featuring Carol Dempster in film after film as a major factor. Dempster, who was apparently the director's paramour at the time, was a rather plain-looking woman who is not especially appealing in most of her appearances, but it must be said she gives a strong performance in Isn't Life Wonderful. Of course, the role didn't call for movie star glamour: Inga is an ordinary woman struggling with the most basic problems. Dempster is particularly good in one of the film's most memorable sequences, a desperate attempt to buy food during the period of the "Great Inflation," stuck in line and watching in growing despair as the price rises beyond her ability to pay before she can get inside to make a purchase.

It's notable that when we first learn of the roving criminal gangs the director makes a point of humanizing them, rather than depicting them as thugs. We see a large, shabbily dressed man promise his wife that he'll bring her food, and later when the gangs are roaming the countryside we note that this man is one of the leaders. They're not animals, they're hungry, unemployed men -- most of whom are veterans. When Inga calls them beasts this man replies that war and years of hell have made them beasts. It's chilling to think of what the future held for Germany, and for men like these, when this film was made in 1924. Griffith filmed a number of scenes on location, an unusual practice at the time, and when he returned to the United States he wrote a letter to an associate in which he said "Germany must be restored or else Europe is lost." Unfortunately, he was dead right about that. Isn't Life Wonderful is a powerful drama that not only examines the ugly aftermath of one cataclysmic war, but unknowingly sets the stage for another that would prove to be even worse.

...but I like this one better than even some of his more celebrated movies. I connected more with the story here, which to me is paramount. Nothing in this movie seemed melodramatic or implausible; even the happy ending shows that the characters still live in simplicity, not luxury. Also, he doesn't rely nearly as much on his sentimental titles; although some are present, it's not enough to be annoying. Even though it's not as groundbreaking as his earlier work, I found it very affecting and real in the best ways. Plus Carol Dempster gives a stellar performance, one of the most moving that I've seen from any era of film.

ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL was D.W. Griffith's last independent production before he was forced to sell his Mamaroneck studio to help pay off mounting debts from his Revolutionary War epic America and his bad business practices. Though little known today compared to earlier films like BIRTH OF A NATION or INTOLERANCE, this little film, in my opinion, is Griffith's last great film. It incorporates the best elements of intimate dramas like BROKEN BLOSSOMS with a large scale backdrop like HEARTS OF THE WORLD. In fact it has been said that Griffith made this film to atone for the rabid anti-German sentiments of HEARTS (just as INTOLERANCE was supposedly made to respond to the rabid racial bias of BIRTH OF A NATION). This story of a poor family's trials and tribulations in inflation ravaged post World War I Germany is remarkably grim and is presented realistically. Griffith came under heavy criticism for presenting a sympathetic portrait of a family in Germany (they had to be changed from German to Polish although one character still tears up a picture of the Kaiser) and for shooting the film in Germany itself. His protégé' Carol Dempster gives the performance of her brief career showing what she could have been capable of had Griffith used better judgment as to what he put her in. She plays Inga, a poor girl trying to keep her family's spirits up while trying to realize her own dreams. As the wounded veteran Paul who hopes to marry Inga, Neil Hamilton (who would play Commissioner Gordon on TV's BATMAN 40 years later) gives a sensitive and engaging performance. The film plays like an early neorealist drama and surely had an impact on later filmmakers such as G.W. Pabst, Sergei Eisenstein, and Vittoria De Sica. It is starkly but beautifully photographed and full of social criticism which did not go down well at all with Jazz Age audiences. For modern audiences the film looks like the forerunner that it is and it brings out the best of what Griffith had to say both personally and professionally. Hopefully this will soon be released on DVD to join most of Griffith's other films which despite his fame/infamy are still awaiting major restoration.