This lovely and poignant silent film is almost lyrical and poetic in its construction. The cinematography is wonderful, since it was actually filmed on location in a little town in Virginia, and the cast is perfect, with the two leads, Richard Barthelmess and Gladys Hulette, simply breathtakingly beautiful to watch. One can easily see why Lillian Gish stated that Richard had the most beautiful male face in the movies.
The plot revolves around the coming of age of the lead male character, and how evil circumstances creep up on a simple country family, which force the youngest son (Barthelmess) to grow up quickly.
The only negative in my experience of watching the film came from the Robert Israel soundtrack. On the DVD version I watched much of the soundtrack sounds like it was recorded at 100% volume and a grating, blasting hum can be heard through many scenes, in the beginning especially. I don't know if the video version has the same fault. Whenever the piano played solo this wasn't a problem. I had to keep the volume really low so I wouldn't notice the blasts.
A lovely film otherwise. I rated it 9 out of 10.
The plot revolves around the coming of age of the lead male character, and how evil circumstances creep up on a simple country family, which force the youngest son (Barthelmess) to grow up quickly.
The only negative in my experience of watching the film came from the Robert Israel soundtrack. On the DVD version I watched much of the soundtrack sounds like it was recorded at 100% volume and a grating, blasting hum can be heard through many scenes, in the beginning especially. I don't know if the video version has the same fault. Whenever the piano played solo this wasn't a problem. I had to keep the volume really low so I wouldn't notice the blasts.
A lovely film otherwise. I rated it 9 out of 10.