Home, Sweet Home

Home, Sweet Home (1914)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Interesting, if not totally successful, drama from Griffith tells four different stories with the later three being wrapped around John Howard Payne's song Home, Sweet Home. The film starts off with Payne (Henry B. Walthall) leaving his mother and sweetheart (Lillian Gish) to find fame but ends up in a world of depression only to die alone but first writing a song that would become famous much later. In the second story a man (Robert Harron) falls in love with a woman (Mae Marsh) but gets a chance to go out West. The third story deals with two brothers (one played by Donald Crisp) who hate one another and try to do each other off. The fourth story has a wife (Blanche Sweet) being tempted to leave her husband for a man with more money. This Griffith film clocks in at 55-minutes but it really doesn't feel like a feature but instead just four shorts thrown together. I must admit that the director did a very good job at connecting all three "separate" stories to the song from the first one. I thought Griffith did a pretty good job at building the stories up but all of them vary in quality. The opening has a strong performance by Walthall and this is probably the best of the group. Gish is also quite strong as she and Walthall get some nice scenes together. The story involving the man going out West is also a good one thanks in large part to the terrific performance by Harron. The story with the two brothers is so over-dramatic that you can't help but roll your eyes. I thought this was without question the weakest story. The final one is the shortest but it's always nice to see Sweet. We even get a prologue that features Walthall being dragged to Hell by some evil forces only to have an angel (played by Lillian Gish) to try rescue him. As you can tell, this film features a terrific cast of Griffith's regulars and we also get Dorothy Gish and Jack Pickford. Seeing such a large cast in a 55-minute movie is certainly a plus but one wishes the final two stories had been written just a tad bit better. With that said, fans of Griffith or the cast will find enough here to make this worth viewing at least once.

The idea of joining together four different narratives with the theme of "Home, Sweet Home" works fairly well in this early full-length D.W. Griffith feature. The account of composer John Howard Payne's own life is interesting for the way that it puts his well-known song in context. The other three stories vary in quality, but all are at least worth seeing. The format seems to have been a hedge against the possibility that releasing the whole thing as one picture might be unsuccessful. But Griffith and others would soon make better use of the multiple narrative idea, making this feature of some interest historically.

Of the three fictional stories, one is mostly routine (the young married couple), one is pretty good (the young man heading out west), and one is somewhat interesting but heavy-handed and unconvincing (the two brothers). All of them are similar to familiar kinds of one-reel dramas from the era. None of the stories are particularly memorable, but they're not bad either. As a whole, the idea and the material are good enough to make it worth watching.