Silent Film Sources - Reviews

Produced under the personal direction of D.W. Griffith. Story by Robert W. Chambers. Historical arrangement by John L.E. Pell.  

Cast of characters: Neil Hamilton, Carol Dempster, Lionel Barrymore, Erville Alderson, Lewis Wolheim, Charles Emmett Mack, Arthur Dewey, Harry O'Neill, Lucile LaVerne. 

For further information see George Mitchell, "America: 1924's Forgotten Classic," in American Cinematographer, October 1990, pages 34-40.

To tie the fictional characters into historical events, the story jumps between Massachusetts and Virginia, until coming to rest in northern New York. Neil Hamilton is an express rider and Minute Man in Lexington, Massachusetts. Delivering a dispatch to the Virginia legislature, he meets and falls for Carol Dempster, but her father, a Tory judge, has little sympathy for the rebel. Her brother, played by Charles Emmett Mack, is impressed by George Washington and gradually decides that his loyalties lie with the colonists. After Mack is killed helping the rebels at Battle of Bunker Hill, Griffith stages a touching scene where Carol Dempster shows the body to their father, allowing him to believe that his son died defending the king. 

The scenario emphasizes their class differences, with the ruling class of Dempster's prosperous Tory family contrasted against working class Neil Hamilton. Griffith also introduces some incomplete Romeo and Juliet allusions. Dempster's family name is Montague, and the balcony scene is restaged as Neil Hamilton stands on his horse to reach Dempster's window for a surreptitious visit. 

The battle scenes in America are exciting, well staged, and presented as the inevitable outcome of British misjudgements. The historical recreations are remarkably stirring in their context: the minute men, the battles of Concord and Lexington, Paul Revere's ride and "The British are Coming," the shot heard 'round the world, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Washington at Valley Forge, and "hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes." The first half of the film concludes with a tableaux recreation of a painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

The story then shifts away from historical recreations to fiction for a little remembered part of the Revolutionary War in northern New York. The film's villain is the king's power-mad representative to the Indians, a British captain played with transparent insincerity by Lionel Barrymore. He recruits the Indians to turn against the settlers, but he has greater dreams of glory. While Griffith's intention with the fictional character may have been to blame the villainy-on a renegade American, since the captain was nominally working for the British, it serves to paint the British as far worse than they were. 

In the best of the many indoor scenes Hamilton has to choose between saving Dempster from ravishment by Barrymore or warning the Mohawk Valley of the coming attack. This scene, apparently taken intact from "War," an unproduced play by Griffith, climaxes with the obvious title "Nathan must sacrifice either his country or his loved one." 

The climax of the film is genuinely exciting, with the ride-to-the-rescue familiar from earlier Griffith films. As Barrymore executes his plan to have the Indians massacre the valley's residents, Dempster and her father find refuge at Fort Sacrifice in the Mohawk Valley. Led by the British, Indians breach the fort's walls killing settlers by the score when the troops arrive led by Neil Hamilton. While apparently only the last two dozen inhabitants are saved, they include his beloved and her converted father. The film concludes with the surrender of Cornwallis, and the inauguration of George Washington as president. 

In its original release America was criticized as old-fashioned. The film was out of phase with other films of the time, but it works better today out of that context. Griffith's style makes the film seem stilted as titles repeatedly state motivations rather than having the characters display them. If the meaning of "The Montagues were devoted to each other" or "Captain Hare, enamored of Nancy, makes a terrible vow" are not clear from the action on the screen, then titles won't help. The use of white actors to portray black servants and Indians reminds the audience of Griffith's selective attention to historical detail. 

While Griffith had discovered many stars, he believed that his films did not need them, and his expensive productions could not afford them. Lillian Gish left Griffith after Orphans of the Storm, and her successor, Carol Dempster, has much less charisma, and there is little chemistry between her and co-star Neil Hamilton. Dempster has a limited number of expressions- she is either content, bemused, excited, or distraught, and she is best in scenes where she reacts to events. 

Despite heavy promotion, America did not resonate with audiences as did Griffith's previous historical epics The Birth of a Nation and Orphans of the Storm. The failure is puzzling. The Birth was produced when the Civil War was a comparatively recent memory, while 150 years had passed since the Revolutionary War. Still, the issues in America should have been closer to home than the equally distant French Revolution of Orphans. It is more likely that the film has trouble discriminating between the ruling and the ruled. This was very clear in the previous films, but in America, both sides are Englishmen. Also, while the film does not emphasize it, the time period of the action is terribly telescoped. The first scenes took place in 1775, and the final scene in the film was 1789, making this a very long romance. 

The film was not a complete disaster for Griffith- it eventually broke even- but it was not the critical or commercial hit he needed, and the succession of bank loans required to finance the production weakened his precarious position as an independent. 

America was initially banned in England, and the film survives in the heavily reworked British version titled Love and Sacrifice. It is hard to make a film about the American Revolution without making the English the villains of the story, but in this version Griffith presents the revolution as a civil war between two groups of Englishmen, fixing blame to the evil counselors of King George III. The film tries to convince the audience that-the colonists were British subjects too, and only acted as any good Englishmen would. 

Perhaps inspired by Griffith's effort, 1924 also saw the release of Janice Meredith, a very similar film for Marion Davies, produced by William Randolph Hearst. It includes recreations of most of the historical events that Griffith missed (such as Washington crossing the Delaware). Oddly, Janice Meredith also survives only in the British release version, titled The Beautiful Rebel. Preserved by the Library of Congress, it is available on VHS from Videobrary. 

A version of America was prepared in 1969 for 16mm distribution by Paul Killiam, and is available on VHS from Critics' Choice. Sandy Krinski and William K. Everson took Love and Sacrifice and replaced all of Griffith's beloved narrative intertitles with nearly non-stop narration. The dialogue titles were retained, giving the result the overall flavor of a documentary, rather than a feature. With fewer titles, the film is smartly paced and easy to follow. This 96 minute version is black and white, so that Paul Revere's ride seems to take place at high noon, rather than the middle of the night. 

The most recent edition of America was prepared in 1996 by David Shepard for VHS release by Kino on Video and on laserdisc from Image Entertainment. This is the Love and Sacrifice version, with the original tints recreated effectively. The running time of 140 minutes would indicate an average transfer speed between 22 and 23 frames per second. The image quality is clean and clear, prepared from material in excellent condition, though not as sharp as one might hope. The original music score by Joseph Carl Briel and Adolph Fink was adapted and performed by Eric Beheim and the Mamaroneck Theater Orchestra. It incorporates "Speak to Me Only with Thine Eyes" as the love theme, and other period songs like "Yankee Doodle" as called on by the story. This is clearly the finest and most authentic version to date of Griffith's underappreciated historical drama. (Review © 1997 David Pierce)