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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 15, 2014 19:38:10 GMT -5
#39: The Avenging Conscience (1914/USA) A story about young forbidden love quickly descends into Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," goes out Scarface style, and manages to conclude on a happy twist ending. As one of the earliest feature length horror films, D.W. Griffith's "The Avenging Conscience" manages to defy most of the cliches and arch-types that hadn't even been tried yet, instead delivering something wholly unique and engaging. The directing is strong, the acting outstanding, as an initially grounded film gradually descends into the nightmarish and insane. Meanwhile, Griffith deftly utilizes animals as a recurring symbol in order to create a sense of foreboding and being at odds with nature throughout the descent. One word of warning: D.W. Griffith's genius is often eclipsed by his reputation for racism. Most would claim this can entirely be attributed to his 1915 feature length film, Birth of a Nation. However, his depiction of Italians in this film is hardly much better. You can watch the film at the Internet Archive tonight: archive.org/details/TheAvengingConscience I finally watched The Avenging Conscience. It's worth watching. More entertaining than you'd expect for a movie made in 1914. (I like Judith of Bethuliah a lot as well. It's also directed by Griffith and made in 1914. It's unintentionally hilarious at times. It helps a lot that both films are less than an hour long.)
I got a kick out of the weird people with animal heads and that strange ending with the baby fauns coming out of the tree like it's a clown car.
Thanks for suggesting this little gem. I don't think I ever would have heard of it otherwise.
One quibble with your review: There is no comparison between the portrayal of a single disreputable Italian in The Avenging Conscience and the horrifying version of slavery presented (as the film's major theme, no less) in The Birth of a Nation. I think you could have phrased that sentence a little better.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 15, 2014 19:41:23 GMT -5
And after watching The Avenging Conscience, I think that leaves only one film on this list (The Phantom Carriage) that I haven't seen.
I'll watch it the next time I'm in the mood for a silent Swedish horror film.
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Post by shaxper on Dec 15, 2014 20:12:59 GMT -5
One quibble with your review: There is no comparison between the portrayal of a single disreputable Italian in The Avenging Conscience and the horrifying version of slavery presented (as the film's major theme, no less) in The Birth of a Nation. I think you could have phrased that sentence a little better.
I stand by the comparison. It was more than one Italian, and they were depicted in a similar fashion to the freed slaves in Birth of a Nation -- lazy, complacent, thinking they own the place; it's the standard stereotype/anxiety pertaining to any minority group. Granted, Birth of a Nation outright endorsed the KKK and lynching as a form of justice; it definitely took its message to a far more explicit and disturbing level, but while the messages vary, the depictions, themselves, are quite similar. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 15, 2014 22:38:17 GMT -5
One quibble with your review: There is no comparison between the portrayal of a single disreputable Italian in The Avenging Conscience and the horrifying version of slavery presented (as the film's major theme, no less) in The Birth of a Nation. I think you could have phrased that sentence a little better.
I stand by the comparison. It was more than one Italian, and they were depicted in a similar fashion to the freed slaves in Birth of a Nation -- lazy, complacent, thinking they own the place; it's the standard stereotype/anxiety pertaining to any minority group. Granted, Birth of a Nation outright endorsed the KKK and lynching as a form of justice; it definitely took its message to a far more explicit and disturbing level, but while the messages vary, the depictions, themselves, are quite similar. I think you're mistaken about The Avenging Conscience and its depiction of Italians. It was just a single Italian and then a group of townspeople were trying to get the murderer out of the house. I really didn't get that there was an explicit message that there were any other Italians aside from the character called "the Italian" and there's no depiction of the Italians as a whole.
Unless I missed a title card that spelled out that Italians are bad.
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Post by shaxper on Dec 17, 2014 9:15:36 GMT -5
I stand by the comparison. It was more than one Italian, and they were depicted in a similar fashion to the freed slaves in Birth of a Nation -- lazy, complacent, thinking they own the place; it's the standard stereotype/anxiety pertaining to any minority group. Granted, Birth of a Nation outright endorsed the KKK and lynching as a form of justice; it definitely took its message to a far more explicit and disturbing level, but while the messages vary, the depictions, themselves, are quite similar. I think you're mistaken about The Avenging Conscience and its depiction of Italians. It was just a single Italian and then a group of townspeople were trying to get the murderer out of the house. I really didn't get that there was an explicit message that there were any other Italians aside from the character called "the Italian" and there's no depiction of the Italians as a whole.
Unless I missed a title card that spelled out that Italians are bad.
It's been two years since I've watched it, and I don't own a copy, so I can't tell you for sure, but I think I recall that "The Italian" was, at one point, depicted with others around him, implied to be of his community and stock, who were all depicted similarly. And, even if not, the fact that he's referred to only as "The Italian" and is depicted in such a way, is disturbing. I think it only feels less offensive to us today because Italians are no longer a stigmatized group, whereas Birth of a Nation conveys a racism that still feels real to us in the present moment. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 17, 2014 19:19:27 GMT -5
I sure don't feel like watching "The Avenging Conscience" again just to settle a few details on just how bad a bigot D.W. Griffith was.
Consider this:
Allegedly, D.W. Griffith was shocked at the protests that broke out on the release of "The Birth of a Nation." He felt that he was telling the story truthfully because that was how he had heard it as a child. (He was from Kentucky (as I recall) and his father was a veteran of the Confederate army.)
So supposedly, he made "Intolerance" and also "Broken Blossoms" to say he was sorry, in a way, for the way that people reacted to "Birth of a Nation."
But if you look at these films, they're not very good as apologies. They're not-pologies. "Intolerance" might be seen as an attempt to show some sensitivity to the concept of intolerance and its effect on people, but look at the people who are being shown as intolerant. We see the persecution of Christ: The Jews are the bad guys. We see the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: The Catholics are the villains, massacring the Protestants in the thousands. (I don't really remember the specifics of the other two stories.)
Then in "Broken Blossoms," Griffith gives us a story of a saintly Chinese man (played by Caucasian Richard Barthelmess) who helps a friendless white girl. (I think she's blind.) So Griffith seems to be showing that he has reformed from the filmmaker who upset everybody with "Birth of a Nation."
But if he was really sorry, he would have made a project directly related to the groups who were slandered in "Birth of a Nation." He could have made something like "Glory," with freed slaves actually fighting for their own freedom in the Civil War. He could have adapted the life of Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth. There are a lot of things that a sincerely penitent Griffith could have done to show that he had taken the lessons of the "Birth of a Nation" to heart.
He didn't do anything like that. He just let it lay and didn't seem to mind his movie's role in the resurgence of the Klan in the 1920s.
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Post by shaxper on Dec 17, 2014 19:29:40 GMT -5
I sure don't feel like watching "The Avenging Conscience" again just to settle a few details on just how bad a bigot D.W. Griffith was. Consider this: Allegedly, D.W. Griffith was shocked at the protests that broke out on the release of "The Birth of a Nation." He felt that he was telling the story truthfully because that was how he had heard it as a child. (He was from Kentucky (as I recall) and his father was a veteran of the Confederate army.) So supposedly, he made "Intolerance" and also "Broken Blossoms" to say he was sorry, in a way, for the way that people reacted to "Birth of a Nation." But if you look at these films, they're not very good as apologies. They're not-pologies. "Intolerance" might be seen as an attempt to show some sensitivity to the concept of intolerance and its effect on people, but look at the people who are being shown as intolerant. We see the persecution of Christ: The Jews are the bad guys. We see the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: The Catholics are the villains, massacring the Protestants in the thousands. (I don't really remember the specifics of the other two stories.) Then in "Broken Blossoms," Griffith gives us a story of a saintly Chinese man (played by Caucasian Richard Barthelmess) who helps a friendless white girl. (I think she's blind.) So Griffith seems to be showing that he has reformed from the filmmaker who upset everybody with "Birth of a Nation." But if he was really sorry, he would have made a project directly related to the groups who were slandered in "Birth of a Nation." He could have made something like "Glory," with freed slaves actually fighting for their own freedom in the Civil War. He could have adapted the life of Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth. There are a lot of things that a sincerely penitent Griffith could have done to show that he had taken the lessons of the "Birth of a Nation" to heart. He didn't do anything like that. He just let it lay and didn't seem to mind his movie's role in the resurgence of the Klan in the 1920s. I agree with all of this. I don't think he saw himself as responsible for any of his portrayals because, in his mind, he was just reflecting what others around him believed and giving those people what they wanted. The stereotype of the Italian fits into this explanation as easily as that of the African American. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 17, 2014 19:42:14 GMT -5
When I was a teaching assistant, I built a whole lecture around "Birth of a Nation" because I thought it showed the state of racism in America from the 1860s to 1920. Not just the film itself but the whole phenomena of the reception of the film and the protests against it. I showed a few choice excerpts from the film (like the scene where the hero gets the idea for the Klan by watching white kids scaring black kids by wearing sheets) and then I talked about the "Lost Cause" and the NAACP and so on.
In my research I seem to remember a quote from Griffith, incredulous that any white people would support the NAACP, saying that white men who supported racial equality just wanted to sleep with black women. I've been looking for the quote, but I can't find it online. Maybe it wasn't Griffith, but I'm pretty sure it was.
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Post by Jesse on Aug 29, 2015 18:59:04 GMT -5
I was recently given the Collectors Edition 50 Horror Classics DVD set. The list of movies it includes is really impressive including many I've seen and many I haven't. Here's the complete list. I will definitely be watching a bunch of these in the months to come.  |
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Post by shaxper on Aug 29, 2015 19:12:40 GMT -5
I was recently given the Collectors Edition 50 Horror Classics DVD set. The list of movies it includes is really impressive including many I've seen and many I haven't. Here's the complete list. I will definitely be watching a bunch of these in the months to come. I own the set, myself, and it is a great value, but be warned that many of the films in this collection are taken from copies of copies of copies of bad source material. Several films in the set are unwatchable due to poor video and/or poor sound. The worst of these is Metropolis (and I don't know why Metropolis was included in a horror collection anyway). |
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Post by Jesse on Sept 4, 2015 6:13:13 GMT -5
I own the set, myself, and it is a great value, but be warned that many of the films in this collection are taken from copies of copies of copies of bad source material. Several films in the set are unwatchable due to poor video and/or poor sound. The worst of these is Metropolis (and I don't know why Metropolis was included in a horror collection anyway). That is disappointing and I already plan to look for better copies of my favorite films in this collection as the poor video quality is pretty off putting. Did by chance any of the movies cut off for you? The first movie I tried to watch had the last 3 minutes of the film missing which was pretty aggravating. Luckily I was able to finish watching it by other means but still. |
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Post by shaxper on Sept 4, 2015 7:58:10 GMT -5
I own the set, myself, and it is a great value, but be warned that many of the films in this collection are taken from copies of copies of copies of bad source material. Several films in the set are unwatchable due to poor video and/or poor sound. The worst of these is Metropolis (and I don't know why Metropolis was included in a horror collection anyway). That is disappointing and I already plan to look for better copies of my favorite films in this collection as the poor video quality is pretty off putting. Did by chance any of the movies cut off for you? The first movie I tried to watch had the last 3 minutes of the film missing which was pretty aggravating. Luckily I was able to finish watching it by other means but still. Here's the full list of what I have watched so far and how the quality fared: *Atom Age Vampire (****): Very watchable, with only the faintest contrast and sound quality problems. *Black Dragons (****): Aside from some minor graininess, the picture is crisp and the sound is clear. *Carnival of Souls (****): Looks great. Sound is a little muffled. Nearly as good as a pricier copy. *Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde (***): Slightly blurry at times. The score is terrible. Pretty watchable with the volume turned off. *House on Haunted Hill (*****): First rate. Best quality movie in this collection. *Hunchback of Notre Dame (****): Lots of scratches and film damage, but overall good looking for an old silent film. Bad score. Keep the volume off. *Invisible Ghost (****): Overall excellent with a slight compromise in sound quality. *Last Man on Earth (**): Very grainy picture. Inexcusable when much better copies are available in public domain. *Little Shop of Horrors (***): Blurry. Sound is a bit muffled. Not bad, but it could be a lot better. *Maniac (****): Mostly excellent. A few scratches/artifacts here and there. *Metropolis (0 stars): Just awful. Utterly unwatchable. *Night of the Living Dead (**): A little too blurry and muffled. Honestly, it's not terrible, but there are MUCH better copies available in public domain. *Nosferatu (***): The cropping/wrong aspect ratio seems to hurt this film more than most, but the quality is decent, and the score is the least terrible of all the silent films in this collection. Very watchable. *Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (****): No problems watching this one. *Phantom of the Opera (****): A few too many scratches/artifacts, and there's some blurriness here and there, but it looks pretty good overall. Awful score. Turn the volume off. *Revolt of the Zombies (***): Very watchable. The sound quality is poor to begin with on this film, so turn up your speakers. A few minor transfer errors towards the start (the worst one causes the contrast to go crazy for about a second), but solid otherwise. *The Terror (***): I've only watched the beginning so far, but it looks solid. There is a thin white line running down the right edge of the screen at times, but the colors and sound seem to be fine otherwise. *White Zombie (****): Considering how much I had to pay to get a reasonable quality copy of this (my favorite horror film), I'm surprised how good this one is. The contrast is too bright and there are small jumps in the film from time to time, but the sound was so bad on this film to begin with that it's difficult to find a copy where you can make out all of the dialogue. I can make out all of the dialogue on this one. |
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Post by berkley on Sept 5, 2015 1:46:38 GMT -5
A lot of bad scores for the silent films in this dvd set, it seems - where do they come from? Just whatever they happened to find in the versions they used?
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Post by shaxper on Sept 6, 2015 2:41:36 GMT -5
A lot of bad scores for the silent films in this dvd set, it seems - where do they come from? Just whatever they happened to find in the versions they used? I've always assumed the issue was that, while the films were public domain, the scores were not. |
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Post by shaxper on Oct 10, 2015 10:43:20 GMT -5
Resurrecting this for anyone who might want to see it this season  |
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