The Avenging Conscience: or 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'

D.W. Griffith takes Edgar Allen Poe classics "Annabel Lee" and "The Tell-Tale Heart"; and, with some good and bad additions, creates a near-classic. Mr. Griffith creates a melancholy mood, right from the start, as the young protagonist gets an unfortunate start in life, after his mother dies; even as a baby, he looks forlorn. Quickly, the child grows up to be Henry B. Walthall; he is raised by his uncle, Spottiswoode Aitken. All goes well until Walthall begins to see "common woman" Blanche Sweet. Uncle Aitken does not approve; and, he orders Mr. Walthall to stop seeing Ms. Sweet. Desperate, Walthall considers murdering Aitken.

The performances are terrific. Walthall is very impressive, in one of his best pre-"Birth" roles. Sweet and Aitken are outstanding. All rise significantly above the uneven material. The Griffith production company's supporting cast is, as usual, extraordinary. Robert Harron and Mae Marsh provide perfect contrast as a grocery boy and maid; and, you should note, their romance provides Aitken with a change-of-heart missed by Walthall's character. Eventually, the film loses direction; as Griffith tries to merge Poe with… well, see for yourself.

Appropriately subtitled "Thou Shalt Not Kill".

******* The Avenging Conscience (8/2/14) D.W. Griffith ~ Henry B. Walthall, Blanche Sweet, Spottiswoode Aitken, George Siegmann

Henry B. Walthall stars as the Nephew, who has been raised and doted upon by his Uncle (Spottiswoode Aiken). But when the Nephew meets the Sweetheart (Blanche Sweet), the Uncle objects to their plans to get married. This leads the Nephew down a path toward murder and madness. Also featuring George Siegmann as the Italian.

This is a pretty strange movie, with a lot of unexpected developments and odd imagery, including floating Jesus, Moses and the Ten Commanments, shirtless kids crawling out of a tree, a devil hanging out with animal-headed friends, Pan playing his flute, and Mae Marsh deciding that the best way to get a man is to wear a waitress outfit. Walthall is very entertaining, especially in the unhinged final quarter of the movie. The very last section is a cheat, but not totally unexpected. This didn't hold the cultural impact of The Birth of a Nation or display the kind of artistic ambition of Intolerance, but in many ways I found this more entertaining. Recommended.

Avenging Conscience; Thou Shalt Not Kill, The (1914)

*** (out of 4)

Feature from D.W. Griffith, which he quickly shot before he started filming on The Birth of a Nation. An uncle is constantly putting presure on his nephew (Henry B. Walthall) to spend more time on his work. When the nephew falls in love with a local girl (Blanche Sweet) the uncle demands that they call it off. When the nephew can't think of anything else, he decides the only way to keep the girl is by killing the uncle. This film is based on several Edgar Allan Poe stories with the second half of the film dealing mainly with The Tell-Tale Heart. You can tell this film was quickly made but there's still some nice direction, good performances and G.W. Bitzer's wonderful cinematography. There's some nice scenes dealing with devils and ghouls from Hell as well as a scene of Jesus. The special effects are quite nice for the era as well. Mae Marsh and Ralph Lewis have small parts. Due to the lack of copyright laws at the time, Griffith used all these short Poe stories without any credit being given.

D. W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience is based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 short story The Telltale Heart, with elements of his 1849 poem Annabel Lee mixed in. The film opens with the death of a woman, her infant son subsequently cared for by his uncle (Spottiswoode Aitken). When the boy becomes an adult (played by Henry B. Walthall), his mind turns from studying to the charms of his chubby sweetheart Annabel (Blanche Sweet), but his uncle disapproves, warning him to stay away from the woman. Desperate to be with his beloved, and inspired by the cruelty of nature, the young man murders his uncle, walling up the old man's body behind the fireplace, but as the days go by, his conscience begins to plague him...

As old silent movies go, The Avenging Conscience is reasonably watchable if you don't mind the expected exaggerated expressions and wild gesticulations of pre-sound cinema, but it does suffer from an uneven pace: parts of the film are incredibly drawn out, while other moments feel very choppy, as though entire scenes are missing (which might well be the case). I imagine that the whole thing would have worked better with a shorter runtime (the version I watched clocked in at 84 minutes). I also feel like Griffith didn't have the strength of his convictions, ruining this early attempt at horror with a weak ending, an early example of the lame 'it was all a dream' trope (followed by an utterly bizarre scene in which Pan lures children and woodland animals out of hiding with his pipe-playing).

5/10.

Henry Walthall plays a man whose love for a young girl, played by Blache Sweet, drives him to murder his doting and overprotective uncle. His guilt drives him insane, and in the climactic scene where the detective pushes him to confession, Walthall is so overcome with visions of demons driving him to hell he is on the verge of an apoplectic fit. The most notable things in The Avenging Conscience, in addition to the obvious horrific tableaux and weird scenes of Pan with nymphs at the end, is the way Griffith draws characters in different places together through intercutting and use of props and gestures, i.e. books, pictures, prayer and other things. Perhaps he already had Intolerance in the back of his head while making this oddball adaptation of several Poe works. Also the film appears to have had some influence on other filmmakers; Chaplin's Sunnyside for example, owes something to the bit with Pan at the conclusion. My copy, projected a bit fast, runs only 56 minutes, and clearly there are missing scenes which makes for a choppy continuity. There is a still from The Avenging Conscience in Iris Barry's 1940 bio of Griffith that is from a scene which is no longer in the film. A different still once thought to be from The Avenging Conscience of Griffith directing Walthall holding a pistol to his head was actually taken on the set of Griffith's lost 1914 effort The Escape. The set dressing in The Escape is basically the same as that for the Uncle's home in The Avenging Conscience with a few things switched around, which suggests the two films were shot very closely together, or even simultaneously.