Le coeur sur la main

Richard Barthelmess plays the title role in Henry King's tale of dark clouds in late-19th Century small-town Americana. He's the gawky youngest of two sons, wearing ill-fitting clothes and impatient to be looked upon as a man, who suddenly finds himself burdened with huge responsibilities when his older brother is crippled by three heavies and his father dies of a heart attack. Nothing more than a modern retelling of David and Goliath, but it's told with pace and vigour - and with lumbering Ernest Torrence stealing every scene he's in as the brutish thug with a leery eye on David's sweetheart.

Tol'able David is a superb piece of Americana, a great film that reproduces a long-lost time in America as well as long-last attitudes.

Richard Barthelmess is superb as David, the younger son in a sharecropping family in Virginia around 1900. The town of Greenstream is idyllic in its beautiful country setting and harmony reigns. David is interested in Esther Hatburn (Gladys Hulette) who lives on the neighboring farm. And they perform the mating ritual of innocents without even knowing it.

Into this peaceful valley comes a trio of thugs on the lam. They decide to "visit" their cousins and lay low a while til the heat is off. As soon as they move in on the Hatburns they take over the lives of everyone they come into contact with. The lead thug (Ernest Torrence) is pure evil. His idea of fun is to squash a cat with a big rock.

David's brother is the local mailman and one day as he is passing the Hatburn place the dog (great little dog) goes after a cat in the front yard. Torrence grabs a board and clunks the dog dead. When the brother confronts him, Torrence throws a boulder at his head, leaving the brother a hopeless vegetable.

The family reacts in anger but as David and his father argue over revenge, the old man keels over from a heart attack. David races out to kill all the Hatburns but the mother runs after him in a great scene where she (Marion Abbott) is dragged through a mud puddle while holding his legs.

The climax of the film is exciting as David takes on the Goliath.

Tol'able David is pure melodrama, and the 1930 talkie version was a flop. But in 1921 with this cast and Henry King directing, it's a simple tale about simple people and is superbly done. The film is filled with great little scenes and bits of business: The drunk dancing alone outside the town hall where a dance is taking place. Barthelmess dancing alone in the moonlight because he is too shy to ask Esther. David and his dog fishing.... Just terrific little bits of innocence and whimsy from a long-gone time.

Richard Barthelmess is the heart of this film and his performance ranks as one of the best I've ever seen in a silent film. At 26 he has no trouble convincing that he is 16-ish. He was a very natural actor who always knows where to find the humor in simple situations. Gladys Hulette is also good as is Marion Abbott as the mother. Ernest Torrence is a memorable villain...

Tol'able David was another smash hit in Barthelmess' early silent carer, joining Broken Blossoms, Way Down East, and The Patent Leather Kid. He was also hugely popular in early talkies, winning two Oscar nominations.

In many ways this silent classic reminded me of what I liked-- and didn't like-- about a much more recent film, Sling Blade. Both are sensitively observed movies that not only depict but genuinely seem to embody the simpler rhythms of country life. And both ultimately end in a way that may satisfy an audience's bloodlust-- but left me somewhat dismayed that the story had taken that turn. (The violence makes the movie seem much more modern than most films of its time.) That said, there's no denying that this was one of the most accomplished movies of its time; Barthelmess's portrait of eager juvenility is beautifully observed and completely charming, and King's handling is quite sophisticated in the way it tells a story through the eyes of a character who is really secondary to the action through the first half or so.

This pastoral melodrama still packs a punch after nearly a century, mostly thanks to a lovingly produced scenario concocted by director Henry King with screenwriter (and future director) Edmund Goulding, from a Joseph Hergesheimer short story, and featuring a nearly flawless cast led by the charismatic Richard Barthelmess.

There is nothing fancy here except perhaps some overdone Griffith-style editing flourishes at the climax which artificially prolong the action, stretching its essential slam-bang quality into something resembling the slow motion stylization that caught on in the Sixties (Bonnie & Clyde's ending, for instance).

Generally, the pacing, setup and unfolding of the story are smooth and sure; the characters are authentically embodied and intelligently cast; the acting is subtle and for the most part realistic; the photography reveals all of the necessary information without ever calling attention to itself. The full spectrum of human emotional and spiritual states are covered. The themes are as old as the Virginia hills in which the story takes place: God, family, home, good vs evil, kindness vs cruelty, mother love, personal responsibility, coming of age, the cycle of birth, aging and death.

Ernest Torrence, in real life as civilized and cultivated a man as one could hope to encounter, plays a despicable criminal, who with his father and younger brother comprise a trio of sociopaths. The way he is photographed and choreographed heavily underscores his wickedness, but this kind of heightened presentation was a staple of silent cinema both in the US and abroad. The height and body language of the three bad-guy actors is in marked contrast to the families they afflict, adding a visual dimension to their essential natures. The least satisfying acting comes from Warner Richmond, who too often substitutes stupid grinning for characterization as the title character's strapping older brother. But Marion Abbott never cloys as the emotionally ravaged mother, and Gladys Hulette is the perfect country girl next door. Barthelmass is the soul of the film and perhaps never equaled this performance.

Prepared to find this silent feature mawkish and slow, I got a pleasant surprise. This story of a boy's coming-of-age in rural America before the age of the automobile is somewhat sentimental and melodramatic, but never gratingly so. (And I can't sit through the 1934 "Little Women.") Richard Barthelmess is simply superb as the hero, capturing the changing moods, the giddy grandeur, silliness, and seriousness of the adolescent male. It's superb silent acting: his face goes from boyish to mature as the scenes demand. Also excellent is Ernest Torrence as the chief villain, who plays his outlaw not as just mean or greedy but genuinely creepy: he revels in the suffering of other creatures. Thus the movie suggests interesting things about the nature of criminality. It looks great, too: shot on location, beautifully composed, and with effective use of tinted film stock.