If you were a director who needed to churn out some films as quickly as possible, it might seem like a good idea to load up your crew and head to the Bahamas to dash off a couple romantic adventure flicks. Right?
In 1920 David Wark “D.W.” Griffith was reknowned around the world as a visionary film pioneer. He had revolutionized American film production in storytelling strategies, the direction of actors, editing for suspense, parallel action, lighting innovations, and numerous innovative camera techniques. It is largely due to his ambition and vision that American movies made the leap from 12-minute shorts shown in shabby storefronts for a nickel (in 1908 when he began) to the epic two hour production shown in grand theatres with full orchestra, charging an unprecedented ticket price of two dollars. (This was his Birth of a Nation in 1915.)
D.W.’s views of the film medium and business were forward looking, yet when it came to picking stories to shoot, his feet were firmly planted in the previous century. His technique was modern, his tastes and world view unrelentingly old-fashioned. This paradox was eventually what finally ended his filmmaking career.
D. W. Griffith 
Griffith with cinematographer Billy Bitzer.
Griffith’s three pictures in 1920 starred three different actresses: Clarine Seymour, Carol Dempster, and Lillian Gish. The male romantic lead for all three was David Barthelmess. Two were shot in the Bahamas and the third in upstate New York. Two were flops and one was a massive hit.
The two flops were the island pictures The Idol Dancer and The Love Flower. Both feature beautiful scenery shot by Griffith’s longtime cinematographer and collaborator Billy Bitzer. And both were sunk in the end by lazy, convoluted, nonsensical storylines and bad acting.
I expect the thought was that a jaunt to sunny southern islands would be a pleasant way to make some good pictures. Griffith knew he had to pick up his pace a little, he could not indulge in massive productions at this moment, as money was tight. He had to fulfill his obligations to his new company, United Artists, which was in dire need of product.
The excursion had a rocky start. During their yacht trip from Miami to Nassau a tropical storm swept two people overboard (they were rescued) and left everyone without food for three days. The two pictures they proceeded to make were no less disastrous.
Clarine Seymour 
Richard Barthelmess
The Idol Dancer
Clarine Seymour is the idol dancer – a funloving, heathen wild child who has been adopted by a gruff old fisherman. She finds the adorably jaded drunk played by Barthelmess passed out on the beach and she and her father take him in. Meanwhile the sickly nephew of the local missionary tries to convert all three of them to Christianity.
The climax comes when an enemy tribe, riled up by an unscrupulous white trader, attacks the village. The saintly nephew sacrifices himself to warn everyone. Inspired by his example, Barthelmess gives up the bottle, and proposes to Seymour, who has finally put on some clothes. The end.
The “comic relief” characters in this film are played by white actors in blackface, in scenes which are painful to watch today. Griffith, and many others in the overwhelmingly white film industry of 1920, still viewed black characters as comedy gold, as long as they were caricatured and overplayed… by people who were not black. You see it’s funnier that way. (Emphatically Not.)
Porter Strong is one of these blackface actors. He was a frequent “funny” sidekick in Griffith’s late films and for my money, is never actually funny. Of course broad comedy had never been Griffith’s strength. The most amusing moments in his films are character-driven. A good example is the love-sick sentry in the Birth of a Nation hospital who sighs pitiably whenever Lillian Gish passes by. That kind of humour Griffith did well, and that scene can still elicit a chuckle or two. The slapstick stuff is what he never entirely mastered, his attempts at it went over like a lead balloon back in the day and are even worse to view now.
Attempts at comedy aside, Griffith’s views on race are reprehensible. A son of the south, Griffith viewed African-Americans as simpleminded and childlike. In his films the loyal, “good” blacks are contrasted with the violent and lawless “bad” blacks, who are easily whipped into a murderous frenzy by unscrupulous white men. The “bad” blacks are to be feared, and the “good” blacks are to be laughed at. An example of the latter is the missionary’s assistant (Porter Strong), who plays at piety because he loves the long coat he gets to wear, and his spectacles are for appearances only, the glass lenses having been removed. For Griffith, black people are like children, and their virtue is not a choice but a result of their innocence.
All of which adds up to a pretty forgettable film. On to the next one…
Carol Dempster 
Richard Barthelmess again
The Love Flower
This film is less awful in terms of racism and failed comedy, but just as problemmatic in its main theme and plot. Griffith was always at his worst when it came to heavyhanded moralizing and longwinded, florid titles. (It’s in his titles that his stodgy Victorian views are most evident.) Here the first three title cards set up the ‘big idea’ of the film:
“How many deeds, particularly committed by women, that might in themselves seem deplorable, have become glorified down through history because they were committed in the name of Love.
“And our daily history is filled with deeds, committed by the fair hand of woman, because of her great love, that are overlooked or condoned.
“In what measure shall Love forgive these deeds done for its sake?”
Excuse me, what does that even mean? And “particularly committed by women“? Ye gods.
The Love Flower is the story of a young innocent (Carol Dempster), whose intense loyalty and love for her father prompts her to many despicable acts, including attempted murder. The cards quoted above suggest Griffith thought History was wrong to let women off the hook for love-motivated crimes, though that’s just what he himself does in this film.
The plot: A silly, twitchy little girl (Dempster) adores her daddy so much that when they have to go on the lam – because he accidentally murders his wife’s lover – she tries to kill the lawman who comes to their remote island to arrest him. Oh, and the lawman is accompanied by a young fellow (Barthelmess) who falls in love with the girl. After her three unsuccessful attempts to murder the lawman, he and the father wrestle themselves off a cliff into the ocean. The lawman staggers out of the water, assumes the father is dead and the case is closed. Happy young couple find father hiding in woods and return later for him, etc. So… old-fashioned Griffith is attempting to be more modern by laboriously maneuvring us into cheering for criminals who evade the law. Okay then.
As the film begins, the daughter is established as innocent and sweet because she talks to flowers (“girlish dreams sighed into a pink ear of a rose beneath the azure southern skies.”) and skips madly about (“shadows her only playmates”).
Her evil stepmother finds her frolicking and scolds her:
My thought exactly. The only person who can pull off this kind of foolishness and not look insane is Lillian Gish.
It must be mentioned here that during this period D.W. Griffith was handicapped in his decision-making by his infatuation with Carol Dempster, an infatuation which led him to overestimate her talent and appeal. He had launched huge stars before: he gave Mary Pickford her early apprenticeship in moving pictures, and coached Lillian Gish, who had developed into the most respected and accomplished actress of the era.
(Not to say that he really ‘discovered’ them. Even though Pickford and Gish were teenagers when they first met Griffith, both were already accomplished stage actresses. The heights they achieved were due as much to their own efforts and intelligence as to Griffith’s direction.)
Griffith had decided to turn Carol Dempster into the next big thing, but over the next few pictures he was never able to “put her over”, in the phrase of the day. What ability she had was never successfully accessed, to be polite about it.
In The Love Flower Griffith was directing Dempster to be another Gish, which she emphatically was not. The sweet, frivolous, dainty innocent was a ‘type’ that Griffith resorted to frequently. Mary Pickford refused to do the full giddy act for him – it just didn’t suit her personality. Lillian Gish was more compliant, but she figured out how to root the mannerisms in a believable character. Dempster was not able to do this. In addition, both Gish and Pickford were always able to pass for younger, but Dempster’s rather angular features make her appear older than her (nineteen) years.
Carol Dempster has been relentlessly panned by reviewers over the years. She wasn’t a great actress, but in later films she fared a little better, she wasn’t terrible, and she did have strengths that Griffith never capitalized on. She may have been suited better to being an action serial, Perils of Pauline-style actress. She does a good job here at hacking out the bottom of a sailboat with an axe, and in the underwater swimming scenes. The problem is that these moments just don’t jibe with the frail, swooning girl who reappears between homicide attempts.
I could continue with a blow-by-blow of this film, but I think you get the drift. Even technically it’s a mess. The editing is sloppy, the pace is slow, and the dewy closeups shot later in studio do not even remotely match the other shots.
In summation… The negative stereotypes that people may have of silent movies – that they are ridiculously melodramatic, moralistic, cartoonishly simplistic, and hideously overacted – all of these stereotypes are in evidence in these two films. There are so many brilliant and beautifully made silent films out there to enjoy, including ones by Griffith himself, that I implore you: Do not watch these two films!
I’ll talk about Griffith’s big success of 1920 – Way Down East – in my next post.