Movies: D.W. Griffith

Griffith interweaves two tales of one family: A stern father rules his family by what he thinks to be the Bible's precepts, but it is simply the influence of his own narrow mind. Hence when his boy suggests going to a barn dance, he flies into a rage...

As the husband leaves for the lumber regions, his wife gives him a memory message to be opened after his arrival. Attracted by a maid, cherished by the love of two old brothers, he forgets it until sometime later. The message serves its purpose, howe...

Agnes, a singer in a country church, is practicing one day when a vaudeville manager hears her and offers her a job. Over the objections of the curate who loves her, she accepts the offer and goes to the city. Later the curate goes to hear Agnes perf...

Two boys find a pistol their father has hidden. While they're playing with it, they line up a target, not realizing their sisters are on the other side of the door. The parents realize the gun is missing and avert the disaster....

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate w...

This early D.W. Griffith short shows the director's interest in Jewish ghetto life, portrayed here with sympathy and sentimentality. The melodramatic plot involves the conflict between generations in an immigrant Jewish family....

A documentary of Hollywood's first great Latin Lover, the contradictions in his personal life, and his premature death....

Mary marries James, after jilting his brother Luke. Mary's sister arrives and soon James is professing his love to her. The shock of this kills Mary and leaves her newborn daughter motherless. Luke offers to raise the daughter. Years later James retu...

The supposition was that she was born a tease, for from her first teeth to the time she was almost grown, she vented her witcheries on her unsuspecting parents and the wild things of her mountain home. But that was before the man from the valley lost...

Griffith adapts the story of the Apocryphal Book of Judith to the screen. During the siege of the Jewish city of Bethulia by the Assyrian tyrant Holofernes, a widow named Judith forms a plan to stop the war as her people suffer in starvation, nearly ...

When the suitor of the daughter of an apparently wealthy widow finds out that the oil stocks, in which her late husband's fortune is invested, are worthless, he finds the daughter less attractive. The widow's broker has a wealthy friend, who becomes ...

Mrs. Jones leaves her baby with the maid and goes shopping for a new hat. Meanwhile, the maid invites a band of gypsies into the house for a palm reading. After the gypsies leave, no one can find the baby, and everyone assumes it's been kidnapped-- u...

A struggling young seamstress supports her elderly parents by working at home. The landlord offers free rent for sex, but she declines. He threatens foreclosure, but she is saved when a large sewing order comes her way. She rushes to the landlord’s o...

The woman of the camp implores her lover to marry her, and he promises to do so, but goes away and does not return. Target of the camp's jeers, she lives alone until her child is born dead. The doctor fears for her reason if she discovers that all he...

In an attempt to brand himself as a serious actor, the smiling swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks starred in THE HALF-BREED (1916), a Western melodrama written by Anita Loos and directed with flair by Allan Dwan. Fairbanks stars as Lo Dorman, who has bee...

Mack Sennett appears as a charity worker in this film produced by the Biograph Company....

This documentary traces the life and work of the legendary "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, silent film star, movie pioneer and keen businesswoman. Pickford's life also parallels an even larger story, telling of the birth of the cinema itself....

The story tells of the young widowed mother of two children who is forced by extreme poverty to part with one of her children, a baby girl, by placing it in a basket on the door steps of a wealthy banker. Before leaving the baby the poor mother takes...

Marie has two suitors. She accepts Victor and rejects Tony, who stabs Victor in a fit of jealousy. When he learns that Victor is still alive, he breaks into the room in Marie's house where Victor is convalescing and attacks him again. He is threateni...

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