Watch A Romance of Happy Valley For Free

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Memorable, crazy movie

A different way of telling a story

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Back in the early 20th century, D.W. Griffith was an innovative filmmaker. He managed to tell wonderful stories and was wildly popular through the 1910s. However, as the years passed, Griffith went from being an innovator to being very old fashioned and stodgy. It wasn't that his films had changed so much as times had changed and he hadn't kept up with them. This is strongly evident with his "A Romance of Happy Valley"—a film which worked in 1919 when it debuted but which would just seem hokey into the 1920s. This is because the film is extremely moralistic and the subtitles often come off as preachy homilies than anything else.The story is one close to Griffith's heart. After all, like the characters in the story, he grew up in rural Kentucky and he idealized its simple way of life. Oddly, however, the film decries the evils of moving to the big city—something Griffith himself did when he packed up and moved to Los Angeles. While the city was hardly a metropolis at the time, compared to his native Kentucky, it was practically sin city! The story is about a country boy named Johnny. After hearing a New Yorker talk about how wonderful the big city is, Johnny is determined to go there and make his fortune. The problems are that Jennie (Lillian Gish) is in love with him and his parents have worked hard on the farm in order to pass it down to him. Regardless, he eventually does go to New York and soon learns about the drudgeries of city life. And, while he promised to return in one year, one year soon stretches to eight! What's to become of Jennie and Johnny's farm? If you could re-write the heavy-handed intertitle cards (which sound more like the teachings of Norman Vincent Peale than those of a filmmaker), didn't use white folks painted black* as well as NOT made all the references to Judas Iscariot for one of the characters, the film would have worked a lot better. After all, the ending is very creative and the cinematography was lovely. Worth seeing but is extremely old fashioned and is not among Griffith's better work. And, if you've seen other films like Griffith's "Home, Sweet Home" you'll see that the themes in "A Romance of Happy Valley" are often repeated in his work.*After watching this film and other Griffith films (especially "Birth of a Nation"), I can only conclude that Griffith must have really hated black people. Again and again, instead of hiring black actors, he usually just had white guys paint themselves with burnt cork to play black parts. An enlightened guy he wasn't—and may help explain why such an important early filmmaker is all but forgotten today.

"A Romance of Happy Valley" is a good smaller production from D.W. Griffith. It's very similar to and somewhat lesser than his later film also of the same year, "True Heart Susie". Both pictures star Lillian Gish and Robert Harron as lovers estranged for considerable length and are coming-of-age melodramas set in America's rural South. I'm not positive, but the same sets may have been used in both films; regardless, the locations are similar looking.As in the later film, Gish plays a naïve, long-suffering country girl who awaits Harron's return from making good in the city. The narrative here isn't as well developed as that for "True Heart Susie" and, perhaps, one can view "A Romance of Happy Valley" as a bit of a trial run for the later film. The frog toy invention Harron makes good with seems as though it must be a joke I'm not getting. And, the contrived ending reused from Griffith's short film "The Son's Return" (1909) and the Judas character were unnecessary and irrelevant to the main story. A more abrupt reunion finale without the cheap surprise gimmicks would have been preferred.Nevertheless, I like the film for its nice photography and good scene dissection between the picturesque countryside and closer views of the characters. The beauty of Bitzer's cinematography isn't as evident in the somewhat worn out print for this film as it is in the recent Film Preservation Associates restoration of "True Heart Susie" and in some of Griffith's other more prominent releases, but since "A Romance of Happy Valley" was considered lost until a print was discovered in a Soviet archive in 1971, we should, I suppose, consider ourselves fortunate. Additionally, arguably the best part of this picture, as was often the case in her films, is Lillian Gish's performance. She really makes her character appear featherbrained in this one, with her nervous skipping and wide-eyed look. The scene where she jerks her head right and left causing her hat to flip sides each time with her while she argues her need for more fashionable clothes to her father was especially amusing. And, her scenes with Harron's coat on a scarecrow rack, as a substitute for her estranged lover, are pitiful and poignant.

Romance of Happy Valley, A (1918) ** 1/2 (out of 4) D.W. Griffith film was one of four he rushed at First National. A poor boy (Robert Harron) from Kentucky goes to NYC to make a fortune while his love (Lillian Gish) waits back at home. In a lot of ways this was a semi-bio pick about Griffith's own life as he too was a poor boy from Kentucky who went to the big city to make it rich. Like the character in the movie, Griffith at the time was breaking up with Gish in favor of Carol Dempster who has a small part in this film playing a NYC girl who tries to steal the Kentucky boy. On the whole, this film is rushed together and it really doesn't work in the end even though there's a lot to admire here. The performances by Harron and Gish are very good and the cinematography by G.W. Bitzer is also good. The story drags at even 70-minutes with a far fetched ending that borrows from Griffith's earlier film The Son's Return.

A ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY (Famous Players, 1919), is a small production directed by a major director, D.W. Griffith, in a simple-minded story set in a the birthplace of his old Kentucky home. Featuring a cast of Griffith stock players ranging from Robert Harron, Lillian Gish, Kate Bruce and George Fawcett, this photo-play centers mostly on Harron, close to physically resembling Richard Barthelmess during his opening scenes as a hillbilly youth sporting a straw hat and overalls to his physical self during the latter half in a mature manner with mustache, sideburns, hat and suit, with Gish in pig-tales or shoulder-length hair as his loyal girlfriend.Opening title: "What a better place for a romance than old Kentucky in the county of MAKE BELIEVE, on the pike that never was." Happy Valley, as stated, takes place in Kentucky. John L. Logan Jr. (Robert Harron) is a country boy whose parents (George Fawcett and Kate Bruce) are lifelong farmers. After meeting with Judas (Bertram Grassby), a visiting city man, Johnny yearns on departing his no-future existence by bettering himself in the big city. Jennie Timberlake (Lillian Gish), also known as "Forgetful Jennie," who lives next door with her widowed father (George Nicollls), has loved Johnny since their childhood and fears of losing him if he should go. However, against his father's wishes, but the blessing from his mother, Johnny heads for New York on the next train and intends on coming home once he becomes successful. During his absence, Jennie continues to think about him, even by placing one of his old jackets onto a scarecrow in the cornfields and conversing with it during her moments of loneliness. As for Johnny, he obtains employment at the Eastern Toy Manufacturing Company, hoping to make a fortune with his invention of a swimming mechanical frog. After spending eight years perfecting this, he earns his $1,000 to return home where he he finds drastic changes have occurred. Aside from finding Jennie an old maid and his parents in the process of losing their farm unless they can come up with the finances needed, he suddenly finds himself mistaken for wanted bank robber on the loose.The supporting players consist of Adolph Lestina as Vinegar Watkins; Porter Strong as a Negro farmhand; and Carol Dempster, making her debut under Griffith, appearing unbilled, as a city girl who tries to lure Jimmy away from his work.Griffith brings forth an age taken from his own upbringing by transferring the wholesomeness of rural Kentucky to the screen, ranging from a middle-aged country woman (Lydia Yeamans Titus) smoking their pipes while sitting in rocking chairs of their front porch; community gathering together at the Locust Grove Church every Sunday; hard-working farmers knowing no other life outside their community; while little Jennie (Gish) uses the Farmer's Almanac to get the latest fashion designs to impress Johnny.As with hundreds to thousands of silent movies distributed during this period, A ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY was one of many that had been lost for many years. With the help of film historian Eileen Bowser of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, a print was located in Russia. Aside from its limited presentations at the MOMA's film department, it finally made it to television by becoming the initial movie shown on the public broadcasting eight-week series (June-August 1978) titled "Lost and Found" (premiering June 24, 1978) hosted by Richard Schickel based on WNET, Channel 13, in New York City. After the 55 minute presentation, a ten minute Griffith short, THE LADY AND THE MOUSE (1913), starring Lillian Gish and Lionel Barrymore followed, concluding the premiere episode with an after-film discussion between Schickel and Gish herself. By the expression on her face, she appeared surprised to hear how much Schickel enjoyed the movie, taken from perspective that it's a very old-fashioned story with limited appeal to contemporary audiences. Gish went on to discuss other lost Griffith film titles and going in depth about her leading man, Robert Harron, as being one of the few actors personally trained by Griffith himself, and how his career was cut short due to a premature accidental shooting in 1920. Out of circulation since then, HAPPY VALLEY has had its limitations on video cassette in 1997 through Critic's Choice Masterpiece/Killian Collection accompanied by a piano score. However, the Critic's Choice video print, at 78 minutes, runs 23 minutes longer than the original television showing of 55 either due to corrected silent projection speed or missing scenes restored.Not in the large-scale sense of the two-hour plus epics as Griffith's earlier features of THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), INTOLERANCE (1916) and HEARTS OF THE WORLD (1918), HAPPY VALLEY, resembles that of a small film based on a short story. Also credited by Griffith as its author, it's scenario simply comes close to his own heart, and it shows. This was Griffith's heritage. These were his people enacted on screen. This was his hometown of "make believe" known as Happy Valley. (**1/2)