N° associato: 5104

USA. - 1913. - Biograph

VHS (21 min.) ; b/n, muto, cartelli in inglese

Abstract: Scheda di Barrett Hodsdon (Internet)

The Mothering Heart 1913 USA 11 mins Source: NL Prod Co: Biograph Dir: D W Griffith Phot: G W Bitzer Cast: Lillian Gish, Walter Miller, Joseph McDermott, Barry Viola The Mothering Heart comes from the last phase of Griffith's Biograph career which terminated with the feature film Judith of Bethulia in mid-1914. Griffith's prodigious output of previous years was substantially reduced in 1913, with more emphasis on making significant two reelers. The Mothering Heart is one of these, and typifies the mature Griffith style after many vigorous years of honing his film craft on a weekly basis. The film exemplifies Griffith's adeptness in portraying behavioural nuance and his special relationship with Gish. The film is essentially a simple story of courtship, marriage, infidelity and reconciliation, rich for its embellishment rather than its originality. A struggling couple marry but the pregnant wife (Gish) is abandoned by the husband for a glamorous woman he pursues through liaisons at a cabaret club. The illness and death of the infant elicits repentance from the husband and a rebirth of the relationship. If Gish is an idealised version of woman and motherhood, she nevertheless expresses her emotions with precision and subtle performance modulation, somewhere between pantomime and conventional behaviour. Griffith is able to counterbalance the potential for sentimentality with a deftness of performance register on the part of Gish and the concise depiction of her domestic milieu. Again Griffith's approach to cross cutting between the husband's cabaret life and Gish toed down at home serves to build a narrative density which moves beyond the mere demonstration of editing virtuosity, a virtuosity usually associated with his last-minute rescue melodramas. Barrett Hodsdon

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