Le pauvre amour

True, there are no big set pieces. We don't see Richard Barthelmess leaping from ice floe to ice floe, we don't see the Little Colonel ramming a Confederate battle flag down a cannon's mouth. What we see are faces: a small boy watching a church elder eat ice cream; Robert Harron, exultant at getting a scholarship; and, of course, Lilian Gish. She walks funny. Her outfits are ridiculous and True Heart Susie is, let's face it, not very bright, but she feels deeply and we feel with her.

What more, really, can you ask for in a movie? You get beautifully composed pictures, a fluid story, fine acting.... two years later Henry King would tread the same ground with TOL'ABLE David and produce a masterpiece that is not as funny and warm as this.

Minor Griffith? If so, there are few major directors besides Griffith.

Charming and sentimental soap opera introduced as "The Story of a Plain Girl". Well, Susie (the so-called "plain girl", played by Lillian Gish) and William (Robert Harron) are two country teens who seem to be best pals having a small little romance as she walks home from school with him and he carves their initials on a tree - seems sweet, right? But then again, she pretty much trails behind him as they walk (like his shadow) and he pretty much pulls away as they start to kiss (bashful or just not interested - it's hard to tell). He dreams of going to college, she secretly sells her cow and other goods (after all, she "must" marry a smart man) and sends him the money under the guise that it is from a "philanthropist" they previously met in town. He comes back grown-up, with mustache - she secretly writes of plans to marry him in her diary and keeps it a secret about who his real benefactor was. But - enter one flirty Bettina: she believes in paint, powder, tight skirts, and silk stockings. Young William, now ready for marriage, unbelievably asks surprised Bettina to become his wife. Oh dear, poor Susie. But it doesn't exactly work out the way he hopes!

This is a really sweet and entertaining film - I like it a bunch. Lillian Gish is quite a bit too pretty to really seem realistic as "plain", but they manage to braid and slick down her hair in the earlier scenes, and with her shuffling along and the like, it almost works - and she's great in the part, of course. The character of Bettina is not really in the vein of "evil vamp" or anything like that - she's really just an immature young girl who likes to party and flirt and just isn't ready to settle down with a house and husband yet. Clarine Seymour, who plays Bettina, is really excellent in this film - she completely brings her character to life and even manages to make what appears to be a man-stealing home-wrecker into a sympathetic character. It is hard to forget while watching this film, the early deaths of two of the stars here, Harron and Seymour, in only a year's time. The art direction and camera-work nicely captures the rural setting and youthful faces of the stars. The Kino DVD of this film features a clear, tinted print that looks great - the music is a nicely done score by the Mont Alto orchestra featuring contemporary tunes, which completely suits this film. An emotional, absorbing, and at all times enjoyable silent film.

Lillian Gish (as True Heart Susie) is an ordinary country girl; she is in love with typical "boy-next-door" Robert Harron (as William Roberts). The film begins with a series of seemingly silly, sentimental, and hopelessly old-fashioned observations about the relationships between men and women like "True Heart Susie" and "William Roberts". Director D.W. Griffith astutely notes, "Of course they don't know what poor simple idiots they are -- and, we, who have never been so foolish, an hardly hope to understand…"

You can tell, early on, that minister-to-be Harron is not really interested, romantically, in Gish. Harron prefers the "kind" of woman later idealized by Clarine Seymour (as Bettina). Ms. Seymour leads a fine supporting cast, as the painted and partying "other woman". Gish tries "power and stockings", but it is not in her character. When she accidentally chances upon Harron and Seymour kissing, Gish realizes circumstances are beyond her control, and Harron is lost to her -- this is followed by an incredible close-up of Gish, which defies description.

With "True Heart Susie", director Griffith and company achieve "non-epic" perfection. In its own way, the film is as "epic" as the director's "Intolerance" (1916). Ms. Gish and Mr. Harron are superb, as usual; though they are young adults, they are thoroughly convincing as opening-scene schoolchildren. The performances are almost outerworldly; especially, after Harron expresses discontent, and Gish reacts. Gish's reactions are particularly amazing; in fact, this may be her most supreme silent-era achievement, besting her own performance in the recently released "Broken Blossoms" (1919). If "Best Actress" awards were given out in 1919, Lillian Gish's "True Heart Susie" might have won over her own lead performance in "Broken Blossoms".

Truly classic.

********** True Heart Susie (6/1/19) D.W. Griffith ~ Lillian Gish, Robert Harron, Clarine Seymour, Loyola O'Connor

This is a gem among the smaller productions from D.W. Griffith's oeuvre. It's similar to "A Romance of Happy Valley", also a coming-of-age romance set in the countryside, which Griffith made with the same costars and released earlier in 1919. Griffith often turned to rural romance and such sentimental melodramas for his films. In this one, Lillian Gish is again self-sacrificing, pitiful and supposedly plain in appearance, while Robert Harron goes to the city to make good--this time to college to become his hometown's preacher. Gish and Harron had these roles down pat, and their translations from awkward teenagers to adulthood is especially impressive here, accomplished with costume changes and a mustache for Harron, but mostly just by their convincing performances. The film doesn't specifically address how much time the narrative covers, but it seems to be years, so there is considerable character development. In addition to Gish and Harron, Clarine Seymour is good in the part of a flapper, who steals Harron away from Gish.

Thanks to the quality Image Entertainment / Film Preservation Associates release, G.W. Bitzer's lovely photography is now more apparent. One slight criticism here that I have is the odd use of soft focus in a few places, such as in a couple long shots and for one close-up of Harron, which blur his image; otherwise, it's a fine technique, which Bitzer and camera operator Karl Brown had learned from Hendrik Sartov in making "Broken Blossoms", another Griffith-Gish film made and released earlier in 1919 (clearly, 1919 was a great year for this team artistically). Similarly, the film's pace and editing are commendable, including interloping the various paths of the characters and one particularly good match cut where Gish walks from her field cut to her walking in her house. Yet, some of the editing appears jumpy in places, although some of that could be due to missing frames, and there's a brief continuity error during the shot where Seymour is trying to get inside her house during a rainstorm--the door is locked, yet we briefly see her push the door open. Such slight sloppiness in film-making doesn't distract much, though. Title cards are a bit too much here, in frequency and storytelling (e.g. why call the characters idiots?), something that's a problem in other Griffith films, too. To finish my listing on the technical aspects of "True Heart Susie", it also features a well-constructed rainstorm, which seems to be an early and good example of one created artificially, with heavy rain, lightning effects and good continuity.

"True Heart Susie" is one of Griffith's better films; it treads familiar territory, but is better constructed and developed narratively and technically. Its real genius, however, is the acting, which makes this one especially sentimentally affecting. Gish is exceptionally brilliant; it seems that any film she's in will be worth watching at least just for her part.

"True Heart Susie" was one of my favorite silent films that I watched during my class. This cute love story follows the lives of William and Susie. By the end of the film I found myself loving Lillian Gish's character (Susie). She sacrifices a lot in order to win William's heart over. I thought that Lillian Gish did a fabulous job throughout the entire movie. In the beginning of the film, Susie (Lillian Gish) tried to kiss William (Robert Harron) in a number of scenes and both characters did a wonderful job at creating awkward moments. I thought they did a fabulous job at making the audience feel uncomfortable as we watched Susie repeatedly getting denied by William. Griffith did a wonderful job at capturing Susie's emotion throughout the movie. The close up shots that were taken really enhanced emotion throughout the film and I found myself feeling genuinely sorry for her. During the movie, we hope and expect that Susie and William end up together, but when William meets Betty our prediction of the movie changes. The movie ends rather dramatically and unexpectedly which I favored because we always assume that endings are happy. This was the only silent film that I have watched where I felt connected to one of the characters. Lillian Gish did such a good job at grabbing the audiences attention through her facial expressions that I found myself hating Betty and feeling extremely sad when her and William got married. I don't think Griffith could have chosen a better actress to play Susie. I would definitely recommend watching this movie just to see Gish's performance. Griffith did a fabulous job at making this a sweet yet unexpected love story that captured my attention fabulously. If you're going to watch a silent film, I would definitely say that this is the one to watch!