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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
D.W. Griffith cruelly separates Lillian and Dorothy Gish, 5 Jul 2004
"Orphans of the Storm" is the last great box-office success for direct D.W. Griffith and arguably the most melodramatic of his best films. Set on the even of the French Revolution the titular characters are the fabled sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish who have to endure all sorts of traumas as the bloody Reign of Terror consumes Paris. Basically we have too parallel stories between which "Orphans of the Storm" moves back and forth. On the one hand we have the plight of Henrietta (Lillian), the poor little peasant girl, and Louise (Dorothy), her blind "sister," who was abandoned by her upper class mother. On the other we have the growing discontent of the rabble with the aristocracy ("Poverty murmurs ominously outside the gates," as one title card puts it). The two plot lines are put on a collision course when Henrietta falls in love with Chevalier de Vaudrey (Joseph Schildkraut), an aristocrat with a noble heart (he distributes bread to the starving masses). Of course, this will matter little once the guillotine gets going. But before that the key event takes place when the two sisters arrive in Paris so that Louise can undergo an operation that would restore her sight. Henrietta is kidnapped because of her beauty by the lecherous Marquis de Praille (Morgan Wallace), and her blind sister is taken in by gypsies, at which point the melodrama is on in deadly earnest. The Gish sisters are the stars of this film; their names do not appear in the opening credits; they are reserved for when the pair make their first appearance. But this is really Lillian Gish's movie, even more so that Griffith's. He provides the grand sets and human spectacle, especially once the revolution begins, not to mention the periodic denouncements of bolshevism, but the emotional moments all belong to Lillian, especially the scene when she hears her sister's voice for the first time since their separation. As long as she is on screen you pay attention, but when the story goes back to the other plot threads slowly coming together your mind can start to wander, and it is her performance that makes the melodrama palatable. After all, this is a film where her starving father goes to the church to abandon her and ends up bringing two babies home. The close calls that almost reunite the two sisters are such that you could easily see this 1921 silent film being recut as a serial. The special features for this Kino on Video DVD that is part of the Griffith Masterworks series includes a filmed introduction by Orson Welles; a portfolio of rare Griffith photographs of the directors and his starlets; "Rescued From the Eagle's Nest," a 1908 film that stars Griffith as an actor; "The Story of David Wark Griffith," a biography published in "Photoplay" magazine in 1916; footage taken at Griffith's funeral; and a radio eulogy of Griffith by fellow director Erich von Stroheim. Based on Adolphe d'Ennery's play "The Two Orphans," this film runs 150 minutes and features the 1922 score by Louis F. Gottschalk & William Frederick Peters given a modern arrangement and performed by Brian Benison. "Orphans of the Storm" would not qualify as a great silent film, but Griffith's hand and Lillian Gish's performance is enough to ensure it is considered a classic. I know that Mary Pickford was America's Sweetheart, but I find that hard to believe every time the camera lingers of Lillian Gish.
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