Synopsis
The story of a plain girl
Susie secretly loves her neighbor, William Jenkins, but neither, it seems, can confess their feelings for each other.
1919 Directed by D. W. Griffith
Susie secretly loves her neighbor, William Jenkins, but neither, it seems, can confess their feelings for each other.
True Heart Susie the Story of a Plain Girl, The Story of a Plain Girl
heh, we've all been lillian gish in this one
Really though, this is a painfully sad movie. Sure, the ending is somewhat beautiful and tastefully done, even if totally absurd. But every shot with Lillian Gish in the movies second half is totally heartbreaking. In my opinion, this isn't light-fare, this is romantic masochism. If not for the ending, this would be a movie about the impossibility of a love that lasts forever...Good thing Griffith is so idealistic.
But the cutting! Whoever says this is one of Griffith's least ambitious has no idea what they're talking about. "Simple, pastoral romance"? Griffith here is at his most free-associative. We can burst into flashback without notice, we can see what someone is…
Film #1 of Film School Drop Outs 2018
I don’t know how accurately True Heart Susie represents the gender dynamics of its time (early 1900s) and place (Chicago area), but the film’s tragedy is entirely drawn from those confines. Characters still make choices. But the film makes an effort to highlight the romantic narratives and sexism which determine these decisions. When William leaves for college, the film crosscuts between the lovers, showing Susie and William giving in to gendered ideas of how they should live. William needs to prove his worth by fighting; Susie needs to prove her worth by practicing housekeeping skills. Neither of them seem particularly comfortable what they’re doing—William even looks like a fool. And yet, what…
Maybe my favourite ever Lillian Gish performance, with everyone's favourite tiny-mouthed acting titan playing the "simple, plain" Susie, an angelic, motherless farmer who sells her cow to fund sweetheart Robert Harron's college career, then watches, powerless as he falls for a tight-skirted, powder-faced party animal (Clarine Seymour).
Yes, that is the best premise for a movie ever, thank you for asking.
True Heart Susie is old-fashioned, rose-tinted and heavy-handed in its depiction of the afflictions besetting America (adultery, dancing, lipstick), with a lurch towards melodrama in the final quarter that's more convenient than credible, but it's also utterly beguiling: beautifully directed by a filmmaker who could do Americana with the best of them, when he wasn't doing racism with the…
This film’s melodramatic structure, in which the fulfillment of Susie’s affections is continually eclipsed in the narrative’s progression, employs the generic conventions of emotional excess, sacrifice, and contrived reversal of events as narrative resolution to fashion a description of ineffable mental experience as the foundation of language and modern ways of life despite its untranslatability into expressive forms. Such a lapse between signification and intent is apparent in the early scene in the classroom, in which Susie’s sweetheart William fails an exercise in a spelling class. Susie then gives the correct spelling of the word and the two switch positions in a large circle which the students form around the room. The staging of the actors directly refers to a…
"You can love again,
despite the things you said
About caring too much
for a person you thought was
The most important part of your life
But that's what you get
for opening a closed door
In hopes they'll find
love on the inside
"I'm a house with no windows
You're the flowers on the front porch
And I can't stop,
I can't stop, I can't stop
"Sometimes it scares me
how much I think about
Going for a walk and
never coming home
And how willing I am to
leave everything I have
And everyone I know
"And you said,
'I think your eyes
could use some sleep.'
And I said,
'I like your arms
the way they are.'
And you said,
'I think your eyes
could use some sleep.'
And I said,
'I like your arms
the way they are.'"
Really well made for its era, True Heart Susie is one of the better silent films and delivers a good story with varied characters. It starts off sweet at first and is a very easy watch all the way through even if tails off towards a cheesy ending. It's surprisingly emotional for a silent film and there's some particularly poignant flashbacks in the second half.
The only real quibbles with the story is to do with dated notions of a woman's role of society and the plot is distinctly about the qualities of a good wife. Having said that, it's fairly unobjectionable given how it's presented (the characters' morals hold up in other aspects) and also given the era. It's…
Só o Griffith mesmo pra fazer um filme sexista dedicado às mulheres. Talvez por ser um dos seus filmes mais simples, pelo menos dos que eu assisti, existe a preservação de uma dinâmica narrativa muito pontual. E muito disso nasce diretamente das feições e das reações da Lilian Gish, dos contraplanos dela. Toda uma dinâmica que é baseada diretamente na limpidez desse semblante, na mais doce e elementar expressividade de um rosto.
watching lillian gish getting negged AND breadcrumbed in a 100+ year old film was a very reassuring comfort. the version that i watched had no musical accompaniment so i played hole’s nobody’s daughter over it.
Hard to believe this is from the same guy who did 'The Birth of a Nation' four years before. A softhearted tale of unrequited love with a considerably understated melancholic lead performance by Lillian Gish.
I've never before known how it feels to see someone you love loving someone else! I was in tears. The expression in this film is so tender, the chemistry between characters is perfect. Those who still want to create such romances to the cinema's landscape should see these early films first; they are as fresh as they were back then in their emotions! There's no love between William and Bettina but Susie can't see it... The life is bitter but it gets better. It's always beautiful! Once again Griffith shows how he was one of the greatest poets of early cinema and we can finally forget (forget but never really forget) the harmful Birth of the Nation of which many…
I believe that when you think of someone, and your love is pure, it does something with the other person, whether they know it or not. You can reach out to someone you cannot reach any other way. That’s what Susie does. The man she’s thinking of cannot be entirely happy because he’s rejected love. It lives right next door to him, but he’s turned his head and is looking into the other direction, sleeping in the arms of a woman whose love isn’t real. But he doesn’t know, because a person needs to know their own heart in order to understand others. And Susie is still there, talking to cows, crying into flowers, writing her dreams, her love rooted…
O que fica desse filme são os olhares apaixonados, enciumados, esperançosos, decepcionados de Lillian Gish e todo o tempo dos planos dedicados aos seus sentimentos.
True heart Susie is a sweet story of miscommunication, unvoiced expectations, and unsung heroes. I'm not sure that it is as good as Broken Blossoms of the same year, but it still is a good story about self sacrifice and loyalty. Gish puts in a good performance and Harron a passable one. The film is pretty slow, but its pacing is decent for the time and though the cinematography isn't anything special the score I watched it with was very touching. It's a relic of its time and if you like silent films this is one of the better ones, but there isn't much to say about it.
Ima keep it real with u chief, silent movies are hard to watch. Especially when they have an pathetically saccharine love story that seems to judge women only on the basis of whether they can cook. But alas! I had to watch it for film class.
Also the version I watched had the worst god damn repetitive bullshit piano track as background music, so that did not help.
On the other hand I'm so out of touch with this type of film that it becomes impossible to rate fairly. One star for the cow and one star just because the movie is old. That gives it some novelty value I'm sure.
For a moment i thought Susie and Bettina were gonna end up together. but then i remembered it's a film from 1919
Luis’ Essential Cinema Selections (The 1910s; Films #101 To #200)
Film #200: True Heart Susie
Why Is It Essential?: A well received film from the early career of who many claim as the father of cinema, D.W Griffith. Griffith's background regarding his views on race are problematic to say the least but the man delivered some of the greatest silent films in cinema's history.
My Review: As a full-fledged fanboy of Griffith's better films (And acknowledging the dicey parts of his background), I absolutely loved this simple romantic drama. I truly had a blast with it and its without a shadow of a doubt one of my all time favorites.
Final Grade: A+
More On The List As A Whole:
letterboxd.com/authorlmendez/list/luis-essential-cinema-selections-the-start/
Lillian Gish, man...she could make a statue cry. This movie has a very simple plot with very simple emotions. But damned if it doesn't pull them off well.
Примитивный сюжет, который сейчас уже стыдно делать центральным, растянут на полтора часа, да ещё и с фейспалмовой концовкой (но не буду вам спойлерить!). Из более интересных вещей, в фильме показано приготовление попкорна в камине. Вообще не припомню фильмов с готовкой попкорна, а тут аж в камине, да в специальной 100-летней посуде – вот это надо видеть!
The first movie I saw of the angelic face was Lillian Gish and also a larger role for Robert as an aspiring preacher. I was so sad when I learned that Clarine Seymour died at the age of 21.
“The order of the pictures on the screen is no longer the order of the events in nature, but rather that of our own mental play...It is the only visual art in which the whole richness of our inner life, our perceptions, our memory, and our imagination, our expectation and our attention can be made living in the outer impressions themselves.”
One of D.W. Griffith's most beautiful films, a pastoral fable of a sort that no one could ever make again, because the sensitivity and spirit have vanished along with the landscape.
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