And the moral of today's story is: Don't marry the wrong guy, if you can help it.
Would rate this higher if it hadn't been SO interminably bleak at the end. The idea may be the woman can move on - as the title card says she is "set free from this unfortunate alliance" - but free to do what? Can she remarry? With a child already there? One might hope so; we don't know much about her as this story is really about the man. The other downside too is that, despite Griffith's effective use of cross-cutting (which he seemed to be the pioneer of), a lot of the major dramatic tension of the piece comes from the telephone conversation between Blanche Sweet, the wife, and Henry B Walthall as the husband, and the latter coming to the moment of putting a gun to his head over some extremely sour gambling debts... and, obviously, we can't hear what they're saying. The heartbreaking moment comes when the wife puts the baby on the phone - also the moment where the actor's penchant for smiling too much as he's talking in his cut-away shots makes sense - and yet I do wish it had been the sort of thing where had this been a sound-era short, there would be a little more context than simply watching two people talk for stretches of time (though short as here, it still feels a little too long, if only by some seconds).
All this said, there's a great dramatic core to the story and Griffith tells a story with an excellent beginning (the two men vying for the woman and she picks, well, the wrong one in retrospect, as is so many decisions in life) middle (all those debts happening in real time) and okay end (what I just discussed). It makes for a good short, though I wish it had been great. If there's one key flaw it's the end being too one-note in its despair, with barely a hint of any catharsis or hope, which is what a story as heavy as Griffith's style needs. This is not to say it isn't a choice that films might shy away from in other circumstances.
Would rate this higher if it hadn't been SO interminably bleak at the end. The idea may be the woman can move on - as the title card says she is "set free from this unfortunate alliance" - but free to do what? Can she remarry? With a child already there? One might hope so; we don't know much about her as this story is really about the man. The other downside too is that, despite Griffith's effective use of cross-cutting (which he seemed to be the pioneer of), a lot of the major dramatic tension of the piece comes from the telephone conversation between Blanche Sweet, the wife, and Henry B Walthall as the husband, and the latter coming to the moment of putting a gun to his head over some extremely sour gambling debts... and, obviously, we can't hear what they're saying. The heartbreaking moment comes when the wife puts the baby on the phone - also the moment where the actor's penchant for smiling too much as he's talking in his cut-away shots makes sense - and yet I do wish it had been the sort of thing where had this been a sound-era short, there would be a little more context than simply watching two people talk for stretches of time (though short as here, it still feels a little too long, if only by some seconds).
All this said, there's a great dramatic core to the story and Griffith tells a story with an excellent beginning (the two men vying for the woman and she picks, well, the wrong one in retrospect, as is so many decisions in life) middle (all those debts happening in real time) and okay end (what I just discussed). It makes for a good short, though I wish it had been great. If there's one key flaw it's the end being too one-note in its despair, with barely a hint of any catharsis or hope, which is what a story as heavy as Griffith's style needs. This is not to say it isn't a choice that films might shy away from in other circumstances.