Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

MartinHafer 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.

naillon-2 The ending is a bit far-fetched, but this is a wonderful adaptation of Poe - not just "The Tell-Tale Heart", but other writings as well. Henry B. Walthall is perfect as the obedient, loving, and dominated nephew to his kind but overbearing uncle (Spottiswoode Aiken). There is surprising violence for a film made in 1914, and several twists and turns to the plot. Griffith does a remarkable job of showing the love between the nephew and his girlfriend, Annabelle, and the agony they experience when the uncle expects them to end their relationship, as well as the heartrending stress experienced by the nephew, who wants desperately to please his uncle, who is his only living relative. Well worth watching.

Cineanalyst The opening scene sets the mood for this eerie and curious Griffith film; a family is in mourning, where the uncle (played by Spottiswoode Aitken) turns towards his infant nephew. Once the boy is a man (played by Henry Walthall), his uncle is still guiding him through life. The conflict begins when the nephew has a love interest (played by Blanche Sweet), which the uncle feels is incompatible with the plan he has set for his nephew.Loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", with appropriate takings from Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" to help move the plot, this is the most extrinsic of Griffith's films--neither an epic, nor a quaint romance, for which he is renowned. In most ways, it's more similar to later psychological or expressionist films from Scandinavia and Germany. The slow pacing and use of irises and other methods add to the pang of this psychoanalytic horror. The restrained performances are even more vital, especially Walthall's forceful performance, again displaying his versatility--rarely has a nervous, psychotic breakdown been done better.It's impressive that Griffith succeeded as much as he did in such a foreign genre, especially in his imperfect period before "The Birth of a Nation"; therefore, the flaws are surprisingly few and excusable. Again, Griffith inserts a supplementary romance, or "The Contrast", as he called it; in this movie, it is particularly misplaced, unnecessary and feckless. Perhaps its removal would have allowed for needed development of the uncle. I wonder why he was so frantic and selfish in his vicariousness. Finally, the ending is of what would be one of the more contemptible of such conventions. Griffith slightly recovers, however, with the most queer scene in the film--the Pan fantasy, in a way, reasserts Walthall's character's insanity.

DLewis Henry Walthall plays a man whose love for a young girl, played by Blache Sweet, drives him to murder his doting and overprotective uncle. His guilt drives him insane, and in the climactic scene where the detective pushes him to confession, Walthall is so overcome with visions of demons driving him to hell he is on the verge of an apoplectic fit. The most notable things in The Avenging Conscience, in addition to the obvious horrific tableaux and weird scenes of Pan with nymphs at the end, is the way Griffith draws characters in different places together through intercutting and use of props and gestures, i.e. books, pictures, prayer and other things. Perhaps he already had Intolerance in the back of his head while making this oddball adaptation of several Poe works. Also the film appears to have had some influence on other filmmakers; Chaplin's Sunnyside for example, owes something to the bit with Pan at the conclusion. My copy, projected a bit fast, runs only 56 minutes, and clearly there are missing scenes which makes for a choppy continuity. There is a still from The Avenging Conscience in Iris Barry's 1940 bio of Griffith that is from a scene which is no longer in the film. A different still once thought to be from The Avenging Conscience of Griffith directing Walthall holding a pistol to his head was actually taken on the set of Griffith's lost 1914 effort The Escape. The set dressing in The Escape is basically the same as that for the Uncle's home in The Avenging Conscience with a few things switched around, which suggests the two films were shot very closely together, or even simultaneously.