True Heart Susie (1919) - film review

Countryside neighbours Suzie and William are in love, but being young and inexperienced in the ways of love, neither knows how to open his heart to the other.  William wants to go to college but his father, a poor farmer, cannot afford the fees.  Suzie comes to William’s aid, selling her treasured cow and some other possessions to pay for his college education.  Knowing nothing of Suzie’s kind gesture, William assumes that he is merely the beneficiary of an anonymous philanthropist.  When William returns home a few years later, he is a man of the world and Suzie hopes that he will take her as his wife.  These hopes are dashed when her sweetheart falls for Bettina, a modern Chicago girl who uses paint and powder to land herself a husband to keep her in the manner to which she has grown accustomed.   William soon regrets marrying Bettina.  She cannot cook, she taints him constantly around the house, and once she has scraped her make-up off her face she is no more attractive than any other woman.  If only William had married his first true love, the true hearted Suzie...

Anyone who believes that D.W. Griffith only made grand historical epics such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) will be pleasantly surprised by this far more modest piece, a simple tale of pastoral love lost and won in which the director shows his human side as well as his consummate skill as a filmmaker.  True Heart Susie was one of a series of comparatively low budget films that Griffith made for Adolf Zukor’s film production company Artcraft, having sustained considerable financial losses through his monumental anti-war piece Intolerance (1916).  The star of the film is Lillian Gish, an icon of early American cinema and superlative screen performer who appeared in many of Griffith’s films, notably Broken Blossoms (1919) and Orphans of the Storm (1921).

True Heart Susie may lack the scale and ambition of Griffith’s previous epic productions but it is just as captivating with its intimate and sensitive rendering of a bittersweet romance.  There is a startling realism and authenticity to this film which few films of this era possess, achieved through near-naturalistic performances (as opposed to the more usual overly expressive style of acting) and use of natural locations.  The idyllic rural setting transports the spectator into another age, one of innocence and bucolic simplicity, which had all but vanished by the time the film was made.  In contrast to some of Griffith’s better known, this film does not overwhelm the spectator with its grandness and elaborate cinematic technique.  Instead, it is a masterfully composed down-to-earth tale in whch two ordinary people resolve the mysteries of love, with a little help from Old Father Time.  An understated yet spellbinding jewel of silent cinema.

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