User Reviews

Judge Harry Solter throws the book at gypsy George Gebhart. His wife, Marion Leonard decides on revenge by breaking into his home on Christmas Eve and terrorizing his wife and children.

D,W, Griffith had been directing for Biograph for half a year, and he is still stuck in the old way of doing things: pure melodrama, lots of arm waving for acting, and so forth. Nonetheless, there are hints of better things a-coming, with the Biograph Right Wall in place to add a bit of depth to the screen image. You can also see his stock company, with wife Linda Avildsen as the maid and Mack Sennet appearing not only as as a courtroom spectator, but as a cop.

Still, on its own terms, it's not very good.

This flawed but interesting short feature is worth watching just because it is hardly your run-of-the-mill short drama of the era. D.W. Griffith had a brief period when he seems to have become interested in criminals who come up with bizarre ways of harming their victims, and while the movies about them don't always work all that well, the ideas do make for some interesting moments.

In "An Awful Moment", the story concerns a vengeful gypsy woman who is out to hurt a judge and his family. Her scheme is implausibly weird, the kind of pointlessly complicated plot that The Joker or The Penguin might use to try to get rid of Batman. But it does lead to some real suspense, and Griffith's technique increases the tension by showing sequences of peaceful family life that go on even as the gypsy is planning out her revenge. It's the kind of technique that Griffith and others of the era would soon use to much greater effect, in more plausible stories.

In itself, the movie is definitely interesting enough to be worth seeing. It does suffer from being thoroughly implausible, and some brief parts of it (at least on the video version) are also out of sequence, whether from an editing error or just from the condition in which the film has survived. But there are a lot of things that you could watch that would be much duller than this.

On Christmas Eve, Judge Harry Solter "throws the book" at gypsy George Gebhardt; the convicted man's wife, Marion Lenard, delivers a furious protest, and is hauled out of the court. Later, the gypsy woman trails Judge Solter to his home, seeking revenge. Home, the Judge and wife Florence Lawrence are preoccupied with Christmas -- he is sneaking around a packaged frock for her; and, she has wrapped a rifle for him. Little Gladys Egan, their daughter, is (presumably) looking forward to the arrival of Santa Claus; instead, Gypsy Lenard climbs in through the window, ready to enact her terrifying revenge…

Director D.W. Griffith's 1908 Christmas gift to filmgoers doesn't quite deliver the goods; though, the final scene captures the spirit of the season. Mainly, "An Awful Moment" climaxes with an often filmed set-up involving: a bound and gagged woman, a gun, and a string. In this film, the awful moment isn't very suspenseful. Probably due to camera and budget restrictions, it's not very clear how a rescue is to be achieved; additionally, you have to assume this family takes some heavy sleeping potion -- little Gladys is an especially heavy Christmas Eve sleeper!

While D.W. Griffith might have been a great director, he wasn't much of a man. I say this because he often played to the prejudices of his audiences. Of course, I could be talking about his horrid depiction of black people--such as in his racist film "Birth of a Nation". But black people weren't the only folks Griffith seemed to hate. Here in "An Awful Moment" he once again attacks Gypsies--and it's probably the third film of his that I've seen this group of people portrayed as sub-humans. However, if you completely ignore his nasty feelings towards the Gypsies, you're still left with a film that is terrible--even by the standards of the day.

The film begins in a courtroom. It's VERY difficult to tell exactly what's happening, but a Gypsy who is HORRIBLY over-acting is ordered out of the court. On his way home, this same Gypsy woman follows him. She then climbs into the judge's apartment and waits to kill him. The judge rather easily subdues her and ties her up...then just leaves the Gypsy to untie herself and then attack the judge's wife in the next room and gas her--knocking her out almost instantly. But, instead of just killing her, she rigs up a gun that just happens to be sitting there to shoot the wife when someone opens the door (though the door opened the wrong direction for this). When their young child (about 3 or 4) wakes up (she was sleeping only a few feet from this shotgun) and sees mom trussed up and with a gun in her face, she does what any clear-thinking child would do--she ignores her mother and begins looking at presents under their Christmas tree. Soon, however, the father arrives back with the police and they catch the sub-human (and stupid) Gypsy and the day is saved.

Too many slow moving scenes, too much horrible over-acting and too many illogical moments make this one tough film to watch. But, if you are a die-hard Gypsy-hater (such as a Nazi), you might enjoy this little pile of dog poo from Mr. Griffith. Otherwise, stay clear and do something better....and that would not be a hard thing to do!

The difference between Griffith and DeMille was that Griffith made his films for the working classes. DeMille portrayed the working classes in his films for a middle class audience. This film is typical of the fact that information could become accessible to the working classes without having to consult a book.