D.W. Griffith made a 15-minute guilt trip in 1909 and it's absolutely unhinged.
Nekhludoff, a Russian nobleman serving on a jury, discovers that the young girl on trial, Katusha, is someone he once seduced and abandoned and that he himself bears responsibility for reducing her to crime. He sets out to redeem her and himself in the process.
Direction
Griffith inventing film grammar in real-time, 1909.
Acting
Florence Lawrence's face doing ALL the heavy lifting.
Director
D.W. Griffith
Arthur V. Johnson
Prince Dmitri
Florence Lawrence
Katusha
Marion Leonard
A Prisoner
Owen Moore
At Court / At Prison
Mack Sennett
At Court / A Guard / At Inn
Clara T. Bracy
Linda Arvidson
At Prison
Charles Avery
At Court / At Prison
David Miles
At Court / At Prison
Herbert Prior
At Inn / Servant
George Siegmann
Servant
John R. Cumpson
At Inn / Servant
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Florence Lawrence was cinema's first named movie star—Griffith helped invent celebrity itself with her.
This adapts Tolstoy's final novel, written after his spiritual crisis; Griffith basically made Christian guilt cinema before it had a name.
US
