United States, 1919
Directed by David Wark Griffith
With Lilian Gish (Susie), Robert Harron (William Jenkins), Clarine Seymour (Bettina Hopkins)
The title cards opening the feature define clearly the narrative’s purpose. It is going to be a morality tale catering to women in general but even more to the unlucky women, the vast majority of that other half of the mankind, who feel they cannot compete with glamorous, attractive but fabricated images of the beautiful ones – the very kind of representation cinema churns out. The film purports to show how such a fake trumps the dedication of a more sincere but plain young woman as the young man they both charm makes the mistake roundly condemned in the title cards – falling for the untrue instead of sticking to the purest. The story vows to bring comfort to the many women who have suffered from such a male partiality.
Does not it sound too virtuous and moralizing? Perhaps at the time and more definitely a century later – and yet the point is that it rests on a vision, however debatable it is. For director David Wark Griffith melodrama is a way of watching the world and dealing with it. The simplistic, emotion-driven plots expose what is, or is deemed to be, the reality of the woman experience and more importantly the mixed feelings it elicits; the narrative’s twists and turns, however weird or far-fetched they can be, emphasize the alienation and frustration that make hope a fantasy and life a burden. The happy ending may be a convenient rejection of fate and an idealistic exit from reality but the relief and the dream it offers are solace to an audience fully aware of the difference between fact and fiction but pleased to have their experience and feelings exposed.
Melodramas have been easily dismissed in later post-modern and ironic times as mawkish productions that cannot be taken at face value and in fact have never been. But there is no real evidence that bolsters this confident assessment by supposedly informed critics and audiences and it could have been the case people did enjoy such a feature as “True Heart Susie” and even more whatever followed, down to the 21st century. That supposition is also hard to prove but the relative popularity of the genre suggests that it does appeal to an urge to relate to poignant situations to put up with life’s risks and disappointments and to get a sense of comfort and hope – and the definition of this hope is an essential way to assert a better and fairer vision of the world that would not take for granted that current, unfavorable conditions, often set by men and the workings of the economy and culture, would always prevail. Filmmakers choosing the genre unashamedly, and in fact proudly, go for blunt ans spectacular illustrations of the bitter struggle reality forces upon women, sympathizing with their demands and exposing their ability to survive in a starkly prejudiced world, entrenched in social, especially gender, delineations. This is not subtle work but vibrant commitment.
A true heart Susie is: she stands as the quintessential self-sacrificing woman, ready to do whatever it takes to safeguard the happiness of the man she loves, even when he is erring on the wrong side. She secretly sold a beloved cow and other things to gather the money William Jenkins needed to go to the state college and that a gentleman failed to pay despite earlier promises. When he is back at their small Indiana town as a graduate, she patiently waits for him to notice her sentiments. When he foolishly and in a rush decides to marry another woman, Bettina Hopkins, who has just pretended to love him in order to get married and get financial safety, Susie bows to his choice even if she is fully aware Bettina is a superficial, conceited, and insincere person. When Bettina, after lying to William, spent a night dancing and fooling around and then got into big troubles, Susie stands ready to help her and to deceive William – but this dubious support for his marriage proves fruitless as Bettina dies soon after from pneumonia, putting an end to a disappointing relationship, with the bad girl in a way punished and the naive boy now released from his mistake.
But Susie does not win over the audience only through her virtue, however impressive and decent it is and even as it calls for instant identification: her foibles, her sentiments, her spontaneous reactions and moves strike the most intimate chords. Susie, drenched in the tenets and conventions of her rural, conservative, and reserved milieu, can be truly confident as she makes some decisions but is remarkably coy when it comes to sentiments. She never dares to take the initiative with William and still hopes he would make the first step. Her feelings are translated into cheerful, childish reactions in the secret of a room, a complete freedom of emotions that the outer world would not condone but resonates with the excitement and hope love has undoubtedly elicited in many women watching her with indulgence and amusement.
Faced with a competitor who masters the arts of cosmetics and fashion Susie wobbles and tries to imitate her – the brave girl suddenly going awry, the prey of the temptation dangled by modern, seductive tastes that are just the new face of the dangerous loose woman advocating promiscuity and mocking virtue. And when Bettina asks for help, anger is clearly creeping over Susie’s face. She is no saint after all, only an unlucky lover who tries to accept her fate and help everybody, including those who failed her. This complex set of emotions and attitudes is wonderfully embodied by Lilian Gish whose highly expressive face conveys delicately whatever is stirring the character, running the whole gamut from fleeting sadness to mischievous joy, from passionate love to stoic resignation.
William is never cast as a real bad guy, but simply as a deeply misguided fellow eager to settle down in life, fresh from his success as a preacher and a writer. His disappointments are plain but an old-fashioned sense of duty and generosity prevents him from repudiating his bad wife even as he becomes increasingly aware he has made the wrong choice. The film powerfully expresses these doubts with a moving scene. Walking through the countryside he comes across an old tree on which years earlier he etched the first letters of his name and of Susie’s. The emotion the vision stirs is expressed by a flashback that replays the scene of the etching, with the two young pupils romping through the fields. The montage emphasizes how important location is: the quiet life and beautiful landscape of this corner of America are the natural, legitimate background for a simple, innocent love story and fields would always remind the audience the enduring feelings that actually relate William to Susie, a world away from the ruckus and senseless agitation defining Bettina’s friends and their partying, which always takes place by night (tellingly, when her friends pay her a visit as William is traveling, they close the curtains before starting to sing and dance and play – to keep it secret but also to recreate the corrupt atmosphere that is such a big part of the thrill).
The final scene, the expected happy ending, is a stunning shot exploiting light and shadow, the contrast between a face getting agitated in the opening of a window and a profile getting unstable on the adjacent wall, before the two persons get at long last in contact and kiss. In fact, Susie and William never dare to kiss: in a way the whole story is underpinned by this inability or rather this pathetic personal and cultural reticence to kiss, to physically display the true feelings they had for each other. After the tormented life William forced upon himself and after the sacrificial distance Susie forced upon herself, both can now break that symbolic barrier and let love prevail. In melodrama, even as the characters must grapple with hurdles, often of their own making, they are led eventually to assert their right to happiness and even as emotions struggle to reach the surface, the film aims to praise them.