The title character in the D.W. Griffith film, True Heart Susie (1919), is a gentle country girl who is supposedly plain, except that Lillian Gish, who plays her, is not at all plain.  In love with a boy named William (Robert Harron), she sacrifices a great deal for him without his knowing it, but it is not Susie who receives William’s devotion.  It is a flighty, self-seeking girl, Bettina (Clarine Seymour), whom William marries. . . Although obvious in its moral meaning, the film is terrific, especially if its story (as claimed) is thoroughly true.

Marian Fremont purveyed a sensitive, un-sanctimonious script, wisely directed by Griffith.  Susie is a movie not a novel, but, with its rural setting, it is a purely American piece on the order of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Little Women (save for the motorcars in the film) and something like Edith Wharton’s 1917 book, Summer.  It partakes of a tradition.  And it pleases to see the subtle and touching performance of Gish and the trenchant acting of Seymour, who sadly died many, many years ago, at age 21, in 1920.

Cover of Gone with the Wind

Does the experience of war ever change people for the better?  In Gone with the Wind, it seems to do so for Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), but not for Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), who retains her rotten soul. . .  After a war’s catastrophe, it is often the quality of determination (such as Scarlett’s)—not, alas, morality—that springs up and creates a person’s destiny.

The 1939 Selznick-produced blockbuster has many weaknesses, but it certainly has its strengths as well.  One can’t help admiring its scope, its epic reach, but it is also rich and insidiously seductive enough to be a thoroughgoing crowd-pleaser.  Though its last hour is too episodic, GWTW ambles on until it becomes what one might expect it never to become:  a properly transporting period piece, however fantastic.

Further, Vivien Leigh, whose high-pitched speech might be an irritant to some, is rightly and fascinatingly vivid as Scarlett.

Cropped screenshot of Vivien Leigh from the trailer for the film Gone with the Wind (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I certainly wasn’t bored by the 1936 film Rembrandt, by Alexander Korda, but I have to consider it kitsch.  This is because Charles Laughton, as the great Dutch painter, draws every jot of attention to himself while the other actors are forced to be virtually nondescript.  (A near-exception is Gertrude Lawrence.)  And because there is too much just-so production design with bric-a-brac and windmills.  It is, in fact, an unfortunate stylization.  Stylization usually is at least somewhat unfortunate.

I liked the acting of Stella Stevens in the 1968 film, How to Save a Marriage (And Ruin Your Life), but not in the highly commercial 1966 spy adventure, The Silencers.  (Dean Martin’ s acting doesn’t pass muster either.)  But she is there, and there is actually much to comment on.  Stevens has a sophisticated face which can look very vulnerable, and her voice when raised grabs your attention.  She has a dandy figure, priceless hair and beautiful breasts.  Moreover, she and the other actors look good in Moss Mabrey’s striking costumes.  Also co-starring in the movie is Daliah Levi, histrionically dull but certifiably comely.

The Silencers presents Dino as a plebeian American James Bond.  It was made at a time when every element of an entertainment film, not just the action scenes, was meant to entertain.  Robust but also crass, the pic’s problem is not (covered) female hooters; it’s sexual hedonism.

Over a hundred years old now, the silent Tarzan of the Apes (1918) is entrancing.  It opens as it should:  with frightening shots of such African creatures as lions, snakes and crocodiles.  Tarzan is not intimidated, which is good.  Enemies keep popping up, and this includes Arab slave traders.  Gee, I thought only white Americans used to enslave people.

Tarzan offers consistent black-and-white naturalism and is sometimes quite unpleasant, as when Tarzan the boy (Gordon Griffith) discovers the skeletons of his dead parents in a hut.  Only an hour-long copy of the film is available.  Long ago it was heavily cut by the censors, for part of the naturalism consists of Tarzan as a naked boy, and exposure of his penis had to be severely limited.