Through Darkened Vales

This Biograph short from 1911 has a rather annoying story: Blanche Sweet rejects Charles West for Joseph Graybill and, through a baking accident, goes blind; Graybill, appalled at the thought, now rejects her. Meanwhile, West goes blind through too much office work. Both at the eye doctor's office at the same time, he recognizes her by her voice and gives her father the money to pay for her surgery. Later, when she can see again and he is making his slow way up the street, she fetches him in for, one presumes, a happy ending.

Even by Griffith's often sentimental standards, this one is overly sentimental. Nor, unhappily, are the actors up to making the conditions very interesting. Blanche Sweet keeps her eyes closed when she is blind. Charles West acts arthritic. At times while watching this I thought it might actually be an early Mack Sennett picture, given that Fred Mace has the role of West's employer, but,, no, apparently everyone is dead serious about this one.

Through Darkened Vales (1911)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Overly sentimental drama from Griffith has Dave (Charles West) being rejected by the woman (Blanche Sweet) he loves because she wants the flashier Howard (Joseph Graybill). Soon she suffers blindness due to a baking accident and of course Howard runs off but will Dave still love her? There's actually a subplot with an incident that happens to Dave but I won't spoil it for those who may want to watch this film but to be honest I'd have a hard time trying to explain what happened and why. If you're familiar with the work of Griffith then you know his sentimental side can sometimes go overboard and that's pretty much what happens here. This isn't the worst film Griffith ever made but it's certainly no where near the best of his work. At just over 9-minutes this is a pleasant film that has a few good touches but in the end it's certainly just for those who must see everything the director did. The performances for the most part are quite good with Sweet doing a good job in her role, although I'll admit at times she overdid it with the bug eyes of being blind. West turns in a winning performance before and after his incident and clearly steals the film. Graybill really doesn't add too much nor does Grace Henderson as the mother.

The version of this film I saw was a lot shorter than how long this film was supposed to be. Some of this could be due to differing cranking speeds--silent films greatly varied on their length due to how fast the camera and projector are hand-cranked. In addition, a lot of very early films exist in several versions--some times because the film was cut apart by movie theaters or distributors and some times simply because the print is so old, only portions remain. Whichever MIGHT be the case with this film, something definitely was missing. That's because I found I really needed to read the summary on IMDb to understand what was occurring in the film--it really isn't evident in the film and there are no inter-title cards in the film to clue you in to what is occurring.

Based on what I saw and the summary, the film itself is pretty silly and old fashioned--with an interesting plot that is almost impossible to believe. Compared to other movies of the time, this one is slightly worse than average and doesn't especially play well almost 100 years later.

Eyesight, once burned out of human eyes, is probably gone forever and beyond help of any operation. The heroine of this picture was blinded by a flash and later cured by the operation. As in other pictures, her family couldn't afford to pay for it and it was performed at the expense of her lover. We have remarked more than once before while reviewing pictures like this, that the best optical operations can be had in America for nothing. In this case the girl's lover who paid for the operation had also gone bind from eye-strain, due to working overtime to forget his sorrow, because the girl had refused his love. The man whom the girl preferred refused to aid her in her trouble and the true lover, hearing of her need, devoted the money needed for his own operation to relieving the girl. Later, after very unconvincing delays, the girl finds this true lover and determines to be his eyes for thence. In all sincerity, after pointing out that the players are themselves pleasing and the settings pretty, one would have difficulty in finding anything to praise in this poor picture. - The Moving Picture World, December 2, 1911