By today's standards, "The Avenging Conscience" is a pretty poor movie, as it uses sledgehammer symbolism to make its point---subtle, it certainly isn't! While this is nominally a reworking of Poe's "A Tell-Tale Heart", director D.W. Griffith wants to make sure the audience knows this again and again and again. So much could have been done with less--and the way it's done here you keep wondering why it wasn't trimmed significantly and all the direct and indirect references to the original story removed. For example, early in the story, the guy who eventually commits the murder is shown sitting at his desk reading the Poe story as well as the poem "Annabelle Lee" (and the main character's girlfriend is named Annabelle)! Then, images of Poe are plastered across the screen! Later, when the young man (Henry Walthall) is getting the idea of killing his uncle, you see closeups of a spider killing a fly and then (repeatedly) footage of a swarm of ants devouring a larger bug!! Believe it or not, back in 1914, such amazingly UNSUBTLE work was the norm--so you can't fault Griffith too much for telegraphing EVERYTHING! But, as I said, by today's standards it's pretty poor--and ruins the suspense.
Here's the story. An uncle really loves having his young nephew (Henry Walthall) working for him. But, when Walthall tells him he's interested in a nice young lady (Blanche Sweet), the old man forbids the union and basically calls her a skank. Walthall is naturally furious, but instead of just defying the uncle and marrying her anyway, he decides to kill him--then he can have the girl AND the fortune. Once the terrible deed is done, the murderer disposes of the body in a way reminiscent of the Poe story "The Black Cat" and things should be just fine....but there are two problems. First, there is a witness. Second, Walthall begins hallucinating--seeing the uncle again and again--like some sort of spirit that haunts him. At first, I was impressed by the photographic tricks...but then it all became frightfully overdone--with LOTS of overacting and Jesus coming for a visit--at which point the man repents! So, while re-imagining Poe might have been a great idea, the results were so heavy-handed it undid the impact--plus Poe never would have gone for the heavy religious elements but would have stuck to madness and evil. Now madness DID appear later in the film--but the idea of redemption just isn't something Poe cared for--his characters were just crazy or evil or both! It is really hard to imagine that only a year later, Griffith came out with a much more ground-breaking production ("A Birth of a Nation"--a very racist but technically brilliant film). So much progress in only one year is astounding. Within a couple years, his "Intolerance" would produce a film that is still astoundingly advanced in many ways even today....but no such brilliance is here in "The Avenging Conscience". Obvious, heavy-handed and dull...this should have been a lot better.
Here's the story. An uncle really loves having his young nephew (Henry Walthall) working for him. But, when Walthall tells him he's interested in a nice young lady (Blanche Sweet), the old man forbids the union and basically calls her a skank. Walthall is naturally furious, but instead of just defying the uncle and marrying her anyway, he decides to kill him--then he can have the girl AND the fortune. Once the terrible deed is done, the murderer disposes of the body in a way reminiscent of the Poe story "The Black Cat" and things should be just fine....but there are two problems. First, there is a witness. Second, Walthall begins hallucinating--seeing the uncle again and again--like some sort of spirit that haunts him. At first, I was impressed by the photographic tricks...but then it all became frightfully overdone--with LOTS of overacting and Jesus coming for a visit--at which point the man repents! So, while re-imagining Poe might have been a great idea, the results were so heavy-handed it undid the impact--plus Poe never would have gone for the heavy religious elements but would have stuck to madness and evil. Now madness DID appear later in the film--but the idea of redemption just isn't something Poe cared for--his characters were just crazy or evil or both! It is really hard to imagine that only a year later, Griffith came out with a much more ground-breaking production ("A Birth of a Nation"--a very racist but technically brilliant film). So much progress in only one year is astounding. Within a couple years, his "Intolerance" would produce a film that is still astoundingly advanced in many ways even today....but no such brilliance is here in "The Avenging Conscience". Obvious, heavy-handed and dull...this should have been a lot better.