ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1921)

Not that he didn’t have a few good films left in him, but this was the last time D.W. Griffith was able to put together the old formula, the one that made him one of the founding fathers of narrative cinema in the ‘teens.  Needing to repeat last year’s big success in WAY DOWN EAST/’20, Griffith took Lillian Gish’s suggestion for an even older, cornier stage melodrama (THE TWO ORPHANS from the 1870s) that had great roles for her and sister Dorothy.  Using it as a sturdy framework for elaboration & spectacle, Griffith added to the simple Pre-French Revolution story of two orphans (one poor/one half-aristocrat) who become lost, adding post-Revolution Terror along with liberal helpings of Dickens & Hugo, plus Danton and Robespierre as hero & villain.  And working up a thrilling parallel edited ride to the rescue at the local guillotine to finish.  Like so much Griffith, at once ridiculous and magnificent; even better when it's both at once.  Here, even that roaring climax is topped by an earlier episode when those separated Gish sisters (one abducted/the other gone blind) find each other while four different narrative threads weave about them in an orgy of coincidence and fate.  Who but Griffith would have dared?  Who but Griffith would have gotten away with it?  Surely, no one else would have turned it into an anti-Bolshevik allegory!  (Don’t ask.)  But then, all the titles are ludicrous.  The film something of a fever dream you sweat out before you recover.  And even then . . . 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In his American film debut, Joseph Schildkraut makes a striking aristo figure.  (Note the Young Napoleon hair style.  Abel Gance visited the set, might he have seen it?)   Naturally, he’s in love with Lillian’s orphaned commoner rather than Dorothy’s half-aristo.  And if he was exhausted, shuttling back & forth between Griffith’s Mamaroneck, Long Island studio and B’way where he co-starred on & off stage with the legendary Eva Le Galienne in Ferenc Molnár’s LILIOM, it doesn’t show.

DOUBLE-BILL:  (An aspirational Double-Bill.)  Generally, after early joint appearances and one film that Lillian directed (now lost), the Gish girls didn’t work as a pair.  Dorothy in light comedy; Lillian in drama.  But three years on, after splitting from Griffith, they went to Italy for Henry King’s ROMOLA with Ronald Colman & William Powell, a story of Renaissance Florence under Savonarola.  But as the film needs to be seen in good condition to make an effect (outstanding Italian craftsmen rebuilt a jaw-dropping Renaissance Florence), and though it survives in mint condition prints (color tinted & toned to fabulous effect), it’s only available to the general public in butchered subfusc editions.  If only the Gish estate would give their very generous annual cash award to themselves and restore it for digital showing