The Avenging Conscience/Edgar Allen Poe

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

D.W. Griffith indulged his lifelong fascination with Edgar Allan Poe in this ambitious amalgam of the writer's poetry and prose: "Annabel Lee" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," flavored with shades of "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Black Cat," and "The Conqueror Worm." Poe's tales are interwoven in one tragedy-laden narrative of a young man (Henry B. Walthall) who yearns to escape from his overbearing, one-eyed uncle (Spottiswoode Aitken). After the nephew murders the ogre, he and his lover (Blanche Sweet) are wracked by guilt and tormented by nightmares, ghosts, and demonic entities that drive them to even more horrifying extremes. Just as Poe cloaked his horrors in artful poetry and prose, so does Griffith filter the story's macabre elements through a Victorian lens, gilding it with quaint symbolism without diminishing its impact. When asked, in 1925, to rank the cinema's greatest achievements, critic Gilbert Seldes called special attention to this film. "The picture was projected in a palpable atmosphere," he wrote in his book The Seven Lively Arts, "After ten years I recall dark masses and ghostly rays of light."

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Features:
  • Mastered in HD form a 35mm archive print from the Raymond Rohauer collection
  • Piano score compiled and performed by music historian Martin Marks
  • Griffith's 1909 short Edgar Allen Poe (sic), mastered in HD from a 35mm archive print from the Museum of Modern Art
  • Notes on the preparation of the music score

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Blanche Sweet - His sweetheart
       Robert Harron - The Grocer's boy
       George Siegmann - The Italian
       Donald Crisp
       Josephine Crowell - Her mother
       Mae Marsh - Maid at the Garden Party
       Henry B. Walthall - The nephew
       Spottiswood Aitken - The uncle
       Ralph Lewis - The Detective

• Director:

  D.W. Griffith

• Producer:

  D.W. Griffith

• Screenwriter:

  D.W. Griffith

• Cinematographer:

  Billy Bitzer, Karl Brown

• Editor:

  James Smith, Rose Smith