'The Avenging Conscience' isn't the weirdest movie on DW Griffith's CV, but it's well up there. This is a drama of modern 1914, but it's firmly influenced by several stories of Edgar Allan Poe, who is referenced (by name and daguerreotype image) in the film.
Henry Walthall plays a young man whose mother died giving birth to him, and who apparently has no father, so he's been raised since birth by his uncle (Spottiswoode Aitken, excellent performance). We see Aitken doting on the nephew as a child, then turning harsher (in convincing old-age makeup) as he tells his grown nephew to help him in his business affairs. Aitken's character wears an eyepatch over his left eye; this seemed entirely pointless, until Walthall as the nephew starts reading Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. In that story, you will recall, the young narrator lives with an older man who has a defective eye ... and eventually murders him. Walthall is in love with the girl semi-next door over, well-played by Blanche Sweet. We're never told her character's real name (nor anybody else's in this movie), but we learn that Walthall makes a point of crying her Annabel. This is clearly from Poe's tragic poem 'Annabel Lee', but that makes little sense. 'Annabel Lee' (inspired by Poe's real-life marriage to his much younger cousin, who died in her teens) is about a child-like woman who dies far too soon. Why would any Poe devotee give this monicker to a more mature woman such as Sweet's character, unless he's hoping she'll die?
SPOILERS COMING. Eventually, Walthall quarrels with Aitken, and kills him ... then bricks up the body in the chimney with laughable ease. From this point, the story becomes steadily less logical. For instance, Aitken's disappearance remains unsolved (Walthall claims he's left town), yet Walthall has no difficulty inheriting his absent uncle's estate, without a death certificate. And a detective (the under-rated Ralph Lewis) shows Columbo-like powers, somehow intuiting every detail of the crime ... even to noticing the brickwork in Walthall's inglenook. Walthall's house conveniently has a trapdoor escape hatch, but Lewis has just as conveniently rumbled it and nailed it shut. Then Aitken comes back as a one-eyed ghost to haunt Walthall, only it's clear that he's a manifestation of Walthall's guilty conscience rather than a genuine supernatural spook.
There's an attempt to evoke the mood of 'The Tell-Tale Heart' ... in which the nervous murderer, feeling his own heart pounding in his chest, mistakes it for the still-beating heart of his victim. But this is a silent film, so -- instead of the sound of a heartbeat -- we see detective Lewis repeatedly tapping on the tabletop. Unfortunately, the rhythm of his taps doesn't match the steady iambic pulse of a heartbeat. More positively, there's a stand-out performance by George Siegmann as an Italian prole. Siegmann expertly emotes his prole role with just the right amount of Neapolitan gesticulation to make himself convincingly Italian, without indulging in 'mama-mia' exaggerations.
Along the way to the ending, we see the ghouls mentioned in Poe's poem 'The Bells' (which had earlier inspired another guilt-stricken mellerdrammer: a stage play by Leopold Lewis, staged by Sir Henry Irving). We also see the pagan god Pan (who has little or nothing to do with Poe) accompanied by some ridiculous nappied acolytes. BIG SPOILER NOW: Oh, it turns out that the whole pesky murder (and everything that came after it) was just a dream, so Walthall is reconciled with the unmurdered Aitken, who accepts Sweet. The set dressing in Sweet's bedroom vaguely resembles a human face, but I think that's unintentional. A weird movie but definitely an interesting one, and its basic implausibility makes this story work better as a silent. My rating: 8 out of 10 just this once, but ... nevermore!
Henry Walthall plays a young man whose mother died giving birth to him, and who apparently has no father, so he's been raised since birth by his uncle (Spottiswoode Aitken, excellent performance). We see Aitken doting on the nephew as a child, then turning harsher (in convincing old-age makeup) as he tells his grown nephew to help him in his business affairs. Aitken's character wears an eyepatch over his left eye; this seemed entirely pointless, until Walthall as the nephew starts reading Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. In that story, you will recall, the young narrator lives with an older man who has a defective eye ... and eventually murders him. Walthall is in love with the girl semi-next door over, well-played by Blanche Sweet. We're never told her character's real name (nor anybody else's in this movie), but we learn that Walthall makes a point of crying her Annabel. This is clearly from Poe's tragic poem 'Annabel Lee', but that makes little sense. 'Annabel Lee' (inspired by Poe's real-life marriage to his much younger cousin, who died in her teens) is about a child-like woman who dies far too soon. Why would any Poe devotee give this monicker to a more mature woman such as Sweet's character, unless he's hoping she'll die?
SPOILERS COMING. Eventually, Walthall quarrels with Aitken, and kills him ... then bricks up the body in the chimney with laughable ease. From this point, the story becomes steadily less logical. For instance, Aitken's disappearance remains unsolved (Walthall claims he's left town), yet Walthall has no difficulty inheriting his absent uncle's estate, without a death certificate. And a detective (the under-rated Ralph Lewis) shows Columbo-like powers, somehow intuiting every detail of the crime ... even to noticing the brickwork in Walthall's inglenook. Walthall's house conveniently has a trapdoor escape hatch, but Lewis has just as conveniently rumbled it and nailed it shut. Then Aitken comes back as a one-eyed ghost to haunt Walthall, only it's clear that he's a manifestation of Walthall's guilty conscience rather than a genuine supernatural spook.
There's an attempt to evoke the mood of 'The Tell-Tale Heart' ... in which the nervous murderer, feeling his own heart pounding in his chest, mistakes it for the still-beating heart of his victim. But this is a silent film, so -- instead of the sound of a heartbeat -- we see detective Lewis repeatedly tapping on the tabletop. Unfortunately, the rhythm of his taps doesn't match the steady iambic pulse of a heartbeat. More positively, there's a stand-out performance by George Siegmann as an Italian prole. Siegmann expertly emotes his prole role with just the right amount of Neapolitan gesticulation to make himself convincingly Italian, without indulging in 'mama-mia' exaggerations.
Along the way to the ending, we see the ghouls mentioned in Poe's poem 'The Bells' (which had earlier inspired another guilt-stricken mellerdrammer: a stage play by Leopold Lewis, staged by Sir Henry Irving). We also see the pagan god Pan (who has little or nothing to do with Poe) accompanied by some ridiculous nappied acolytes. BIG SPOILER NOW: Oh, it turns out that the whole pesky murder (and everything that came after it) was just a dream, so Walthall is reconciled with the unmurdered Aitken, who accepts Sweet. The set dressing in Sweet's bedroom vaguely resembles a human face, but I think that's unintentional. A weird movie but definitely an interesting one, and its basic implausibility makes this story work better as a silent. My rating: 8 out of 10 just this once, but ... nevermore!