Wilfred Lucas leaves his wife, Stephanie Longfellow, every night to rendezvous with actress Vivian Prescott. When Stephanie discovers a note from the scarlet woman, family friend Edwin August tells her the best way to get him back is to make him jealous.
It had been only thirty months since D.W. Griffith had debuted as a movie director, and in that time he had turned almost every aspect of movie-making upside down. In this average work from him, we can see almost every aspect of how he had improved and regularized the form into a model that in a few more years, everyone would be using.
There is the editing, as shown in the restaurant scene: after an initial setting shot, each table is shown in a tight two-shot that focuses on the reactions of the characters to what is going on at the next table; at the theater exit, we see a dozen people in a crowd scene, each doing things that make sense and add to the composition; the costumes are realistic; the sets are realistic; the long explanatory titles are gone and the acting is expressive and not stagily huge.
It's not a great movie, which only goes to show how much Griffith had forced the growth of film in that short time.
It had been only thirty months since D.W. Griffith had debuted as a movie director, and in that time he had turned almost every aspect of movie-making upside down. In this average work from him, we can see almost every aspect of how he had improved and regularized the form into a model that in a few more years, everyone would be using.
There is the editing, as shown in the restaurant scene: after an initial setting shot, each table is shown in a tight two-shot that focuses on the reactions of the characters to what is going on at the next table; at the theater exit, we see a dozen people in a crowd scene, each doing things that make sense and add to the composition; the costumes are realistic; the sets are realistic; the long explanatory titles are gone and the acting is expressive and not stagily huge.
It's not a great movie, which only goes to show how much Griffith had forced the growth of film in that short time.
