Watch True Heart Susie For Free

Pretty Good

Fantastic!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This movie was part of a group of Griffith's rural romances (also "A Romance of Happy Valley", "The Great Love"). At this time in his career (after "Intolerance") Griffith was trying to recoup financially, his debt and bank loan entrapment had already begun so he begun filming a series of less ambitious but lyrical little films about his boyhood in Kentucky. Ever the showman he tried to add stature to these smaller films with wordy pretentious titles. "True Heart Susie" opens with a title that proclaims every incident in it is taken from life - Charles Dickens would be surprised as "True Heart Susie" is a mixture of "Great Expectations" and "David Copperfield" - and goes on to dedicate itself to "All the Women of the World who wait for the Great Love that Never Comes"!!Susie (Gish) has an unrequited love for William (Harron) who only half heartedly returns her friendship. She is secretly scrimping and saving to put him through college but he mistakenly thinks his benefactor is a stranger who once passed through their village and promised to help. Susie even sells her beloved cow, Daisy, to start William on his way.Insufferable William comes home from college sporting a moustache and none the wiser about who his benefactor was. He sternly tells Susie "men flirt with painted girls but always marry plain ones" - if only he practiced what he preached. Of course he is fair game for Bettina, the little milliner from Chicago, who believes thoroughly in "paint, powder and tight skirts". She was played by bewitching Clarine Seymour and steals the movie, in my opinion. Clarine gave the film some much needed vivacity. She wasn't a typical Griffith idealization of southern womanhood, being very Clara Bow like, and who knows what type of career she would have had if she had lived. Even at this stage Griffith was heavily promoting his young protégé Carol Dempster as a logical successor to Lillian Gish, even though she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag and would almost destroy his reputation with her inept and wooden performances. In this movie she has a definite extra part as Bettina's fun loving friend.How does William come to have this fascination over women - perhaps he is the only marriageable man in town!! It is clear he is putty in Bettina's hands and to her he is only a "punk minister" but as her money is gone she must marry someone. Marriage isn't the bliss that William imagined it to be. Bettina is a shrew who flies into rages and break plates (slipshod continuity, she picks up a plain plate but the plate that is broken on the floor is a Willow pattern) - a real contrast when they have Sunday dinner at Susie's and William has his first decent meal since before his marriage. Bettina certainly finds married life a drag and when she sneaks out to a party and is caught in the rain, she loses her keys and is forced to seek shelter at Susie's.I agree the strength of the film is in it's performers, Lillian Gish's Susie seems so innocent and trusting, that William's slighting of her gains him little audience sympathy. Robert Harron's metamorphosis when he returns from college shows what a mature and subtle actor he could be. Gone is the gawkiness and it is a tribute to his acting that in my opinion when he marries Bettina, he starts to engage audience sympathy. The lovely lyricalness continues almost to the end when a closing title hopes they will be happy and asks the audience to imagine Susie and William looking back to their earlier innocent years.

True Heart Susie is the best silent film I have ever seen. The story was a little far-fetched, but it was a cute romantic drama. The almost kissing scenes in the beginning of the film had everyone at the edge on had all the students on the edge of their seats. People shouted out "kiss her already." The awkwardness of the main characters was portrayed perfectly throughout the movie. The kissing scenes by the fence as he is about to leave for college and the scene by the tree at the beginning of the film are as awkward as the scene at the end when they finally kiss. The awkward kiss is a reference to their innocence and childhood crush on one another.The whole movie was an absolute master piece. The innocence portrayed by Lillian Gish was extraordinary. The close ups were amazing. Although it was a silent film, I could feel every emotion she felt by the small gestures in her face. I wanted cry when William proposed to Betty and punch her she was in Susie's house after the rain storm. The emotions were more believable than the plot itself due to the amazing acting. The few colors of the film added to the emotions of Susie. The yellow showed her jealousy of Betty. The blue during the rain storm represented her longing for William and the betrayal of the partying Betty.The plot of the film was adorable from beginning to end. I truly believe that both of the main actors were from the country. The values in the film were portrayed as old fashioned values. William went to college and studied religion and became the preacher of his home town. The women stayed at home and kept care of the house. Susie's best friend was a cow. The entire town was so quaint and added to the aesthetics of the film.

D.W. Griffith was a Silent films era genius, this man created masterpieces. In this film, it is a love story between a little boy and little girl, who grow up together, this love story has a little of a spin to it. Most love stories it takes a little for them to both realize they love each other and for them to end up together. Well in True Heart Susie, Susie is in love with William who has no clue that she has those feelings for him, although she makes it as obvious as possible for him to actually understand her feelings he still does not understand. Well William tries going to college, but doesn't have the funding to be able to get into college, Susie finds out this information and sales her beloved cow that was passed to her from her mother as she died, this cow had great meaning to Susie but she sold it to get money for William to be able to go to college. William gets into college and moves away, when he returns from college he has finally been educated, but when William returns from his college life he comes back with a new women he is married to named Betty Hopkins who is only marrying him for his money and has affairs with him behind his back. Susie catches Betty, but loves William so much she can't tell him and therefore keeps her mouth shut, until one night Betty lies to William and leaves the house to go party. She didn't realize she lost her house key and was locked out in the rain and nasty weather for hours until she went to Susie's later on she would catch pneumonia. After Betty passes away Susie's aunt finally explains everything to William who then marries Susie. The way this movie catches you isn't only through the love story drams, but how you can follow Susie's emotions like you can almost feel what she is feeling, that is what makes True Heart Susie Significant silent film.

The second that William married Bettina I knew she'd have to die. I'm not being melodramatic just truthful this movie was made and takes place in the early 20th century; no one got divorced back then, the only way that marriage was going to break up was for either William or Bettina to die. I only hoped for Susie's sake that it would be Bettina. Although, with the careless fashion that William treated her love and sacrifices it might have been better for Susie, if William was the one to die. Susie believed that her happiness was directly related to William, this displays the mindset of the time that women need men to be happy, and is proved as the movies "happy ending" has Susie marrying William, and though it is no longer the mindset of the American public that a women needs a man to be happy, it is still a myth perpetrated by Hollywood as most films still contain this classic "happy ending". If William had died and was out of the picture Susie might have been able to live her life for herself, instead of for William. Throughout the movie every action Susie makes is directly related to William. Whether she's selling her cow to send him to school, or protecting his wife, all her choices are made with William in mind. We never see what Susie wants, besides of course, her desire to marry Williams, which might just have stemmed from a childhood crush; that would have passed if she had not made it her life goal to make sure William got everything he wanted. We learn very little about Bettina except that she's selfish and thinks only of herself, a direct opposite to Susie, who cares only for William and her Aunt. This comparison between Bettina and Susie is alluded to several times throughout the movie, each time with Susie coming out on top. I believe the director did this to keep us from bonding with Bettina, so we would not care when she died and resent Susie her happiness. All in all not a bad movie, pay special attention to the title cards they're hilarious.