One Exciting Night

One Exciting Night (1922)

** (out of 4)

D.W. Griffith's only venture into the "old dark house/mystery" genre is a rather strange film that also mixes in comedy but in the end it just doesn't work. A baby is born in Africa and sixteen years later she is about to gain control of an estate, although she doesn't know this. Soon someone shows up on the scene committing murders but who is it? On the whole this is a very average film due in large part to its incredible running time, which nearly reaches two and a half hours. The final hour of the film contains about twelve different endings where you think the film is over but it keeps going on and on and on. Henry Hull delivers a good performance but the rest of the cast is rather lame. The biggest highlight is a hurricane at the end of the film, which contains some of the greatest special effects of its time. There's a moment when a servant takes shelter by a house only to have the house tear apart and fly away while the actor is standing there.

ONE EXCITING NIGHT is an odd film directed by D.W. Griffith. It stars Carol Dempster and Henry Hull. The film is unusual for Griffith because it's a comic mystery. Although the film is too long, it's entertaining.

Dempster is an unknowing heiress who is always seeking the love of her mother. But the woman is not her mother. Dempster is being pawned off on an older suitor who is after her estate. At a party she meets and falls for Hull, but then odd happenings begin and there is a murder.

The intricate plot is probably defeated by the long running time, but this film is underrated possibly because it lacks major stars. Yet Henry Hull is an appealing leading man here, and Carol Dempster is a surprise.

A minor actress in the teens, Dempster was elevated to stardom in the 20s by Griffith after she became his mistress. Although Dempster has historically been regarded as a dud, she's quite good here as the awkward heroine, Agnes Harrington. She has an angular beauty that was slightly out of step with the era's ideals, but in the right role, Dempster was a good actress. In Griffith's THE SORROWS OF Satan and ISN'T LIFE WONDFERUL, Dempster turns in excellent performances. She retired from films before talkies came in and never looked back.

Also good are Margaret Dale as the "mother," Porter Strong as Romeo, Morgan Wallace as Rockmaine, and Charles Emmett Mack as the "guest."

Filming locations are quite good.

D. W. Griffith made his only venture into the mystery field here, primarily due to the success of the "old dark house" genre, stimulated by Mary Roberts Rinehart's novel, THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE, which was very successfully filmed and staged (with Avery Hopwood) as THE BAT. The script written by Griffith (as Irene Sinclair) is extremely complicated, and engages the cast in a jointed series of plots revolving for the most part about attempts at discovery of a missing half-million dollars of bootlegger takings, secreted somewhere within a mansion that is replete with secret passages and hidden panels. Griffith gave his mistress, Carol Dempster, the female lead romantically linked with Henry Hull, whose kinetic limberness is difficult to match, although she acts well, and vigorously too, as much of the scenario provides comedic lunacy; Morgan Wallace is particularly engaging as a Dempster suitor. The film is well-edited, and the special effects by Edward Scholl are creative, to say the least; however, Griffith's penchant for adding numerous story lines to his cinematic landscape causes more than a bit of weariness in the viewer as the work pitches constantly among romantic, mystery and comedy themes; as to be expected, the small moments of detail when the talented players are given rein are generally the most satisfying.

This was long for a silent film, over two hours, but probably the best silent film I have seen to date.

The story starts in Africa where a man is traveling with his sister-in-law, who is ill and just delivered a baby girl. They receive news that his brother, her husband was gravely ill himself. Subsequently both parents die...thinking that if he gets rid of the baby there is nothing to stop him from inheriting the estate, title and fortune...the uncle first thinks of killing the baby girl, but instead gives her to the nurse to take to America and raise in anonymity.

Sixteen years later, the girl named Agnes has been raised by this cold nurse who she believes to be her mother...but not really understanding warm motherly affection. The nurse having run out of money compromises herself and gets observed stealing by a wealthy older man. This man takes advantage of the situation by promising not to turn her in if she will marry young Agnes to him. After explaining the situation to Agnes she agrees to sacrifice herself to the old creepy man in marriage, which is how they become engaged.

Subsequently, a young wealthy land owner returns from his travels and meets Agnes...the two fall in love. He invites Agnes and her "mother" to stay at his estate.

The estate which has been unoccupied for years has, unbeknownst to the young man, been being used by bootleggers to store their stock bootleg. Learning the house is being opened up again, they rush to get their supplies out the back.

In the evening there is a big dinner party, but we discover that before the dinner party one bootlegger turned on the other and tried to steal a half a million dollars in cash. He is cornered and killed by his partner but not before he managed to stash the cash. While the staff are opening the house up, the young man's butler discovers the bag containing the cash...but he only sees the important documents that were placed by the bootlegger on top. Thinking the papers were important he takes them downstairs and locks them in the safe which is behind a hidden panel in the wall.

Staff members discover the murdered bootlegger upstairs and the police detectives are called. Meanwhile a dinner party happens and many guests and staff are behaving suspiciously as people sneak off...we assume one of them is the murderer and looking for the money.

And so this becomes a murder mystery...with lots of shady characters!

It was great...although I am not sure it needed a hurricane like storm, but it has one!

"Don't reveal the villain and pay attention to the early scenes..."

I am going to honor their wishes and not share who the villain is, only to say that I was able to guess but it did not dim my delight with the film at all.

A bit of a surprise that I enjoyed tremendously!

I loved one of the end scenes tremendously...a hand kiss followed by a kiss on the cheek (do you know which one).

I highly recommend this to silent movie fans and just cinema fans in general!

"Mystery of love, the sweetest of mysteries without which there would be no light...no music..."

"That moment when a man asks a woman to go with him on the path of Love. The path that goes through life and on through eternity."

THE BAT by Avery Hopwood opened in August of 1920 and was a smash that ran for more than two years and 867 performances. After wrapping on ORPHANS OF THE STORM, Griffith worked on his next project, which was -- ahem -- inspired by the Broadway hit. It would be a modern dress affair, with contemporary characters and thrills, and humor and all that good stuff. There would be a missing heir, a treasure of half a million dollars to be found, a fiendish, masked murderer running around, reaching from hidden panels in the wall to strangle random house guests, a romance of young people and comic lower-class servants.

There are some issues.

First, there's the technical issue of its length. The IMDb lists it as running 128 minutes. The copy I saw on YouTube, derived from the Killiam Collection, timed at 146 minutes, and crawled. I adjusted the speed so it ran a touch over a hundred minutes. Now it was brisk. Unfortunately, for the first three-quarters of its length, it's a snooze.

The opening certainly took its time, with a long prologue that ran backwards sixteen years from the main events, setting up the ending with little surprise. The prologue was about 45 minutes on the Killiam print, 30 in real life. I would have cut it entirely, and dropped a little of the background into the rest of the picture, for a nice 70-minute feature.

Griffith might have wished to make a small picture, but he could not. He was the Great Director, and his public demanded major pieces from him. He could no more direct a five-reel movie than Fannie Hurst could turn out limericks. Like Cecil Demille in his last decade, every movie had to be an epic with a finale that would top his last epic.

Next there's the matter of casting. I won't even go into the actors in blackface playing comic servants. It might have still played in 1922, barely, but looking at them now, it's just insulting. Worse, Griffith had lost the Gish sisters and Richard Barthelmess, and he was stuck with Carol Dempster. Miss Dempster is fine in the closing sequence of the movie, when she nerves herself up to go out after the villain. She was fine at playing the modern -- for 1922 -- woman. Unfortunately, earlier in the movie, she plays the stereotypical Griffith heroine: sixteen years old, virginal, browbeaten by her mother and hiding in her blankets. She's worse than poor. She's ridiculous in the role.

So we have a slow, sodden beginning played by the wrong actors, leading up to the epic Griffith finish, and that ending is fine. People run around. A hurricane starts up. It rips trees and houses apart, it knocks down the players, it threatens them with death, and it's truly exciting.

Unfortunately, by then, I didn't care. The long prologue told me how it would come out. The dictates of drama told me that boy would get girl. I had the leisure to figure out who the villain was, and why that threatening man who invades the girls' bedroom was no threat. There was no dramatic tension, just the socko finish, like the Little Colonel leading the charge, or Lilian Gish leaping from ice floe to ice floe. Too bad. Too little, too late.