Fantastic!

Charming and brutal

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

If DW Griffith is fondly remembered at all these days, it is usually for his exhilarating rides-to-the-rescue or the breathtaking pageantry of his epics. Those who have studied his work in any depth will of course know of his fine and subtle handling of drama and romance. However far fewer have commented on his masterful evocation of atmosphere. This, his only entry into the horror genre, a genre that is nine-tenths atmosphere, is appropriately steeped in it.Griffith was of course a visual storyteller, but he learnt techniques of narrative and exposition from the world of literature. In the Avenging Conscience, he not only bases his story on the work of Edgar Allen Poe, but he juxtaposes the horrific with the beautiful and tender, as did Poe, Bram Stoker and many other Victorian horror writers. This uncomfortable contrast is established from the very first scene. As the opening shot fades in, we are clearly looking at a funeral scene, but then cut immediately to a baby in his cot – innocent life in the midst death. Throughout the picture Griffith shows an unusually high number of inserts which do not directly tell part of the story, but which add layers of terror or revulsion – such as a howling wolf or an owl hooting in the trees. A dreamlike tone is maintained throughout, with few title cards, but some snippets of Poe's poetry that relate to the story only in an abstract manner.The Avenging Conscience also contains some wonderful examples of Griffith's handling of dramatic depth. He keeps his camera at a respectful distance during the romantic scenes, refraining from facial close-ups until the latter moments, and then only using them sparingly to give them maximum impact. Some might pick at the fact that the camera is always static, and there is little editing within the scene, but in fact this just goes to demonstrate just how much a director can do with movement within the frame. To take one example from this picture – in the earlier scenes at the uncle's house, there is a birdcage with a few canaries hopping around inside it. In later scenes it is covered up, twisting forlornly on its hook. It's a great touch to establish mood, but Griffith doesn't draw our attention to it with a clumsy close-up or lumbering pan; our eyes will be drawn to it because it is moving while other things in the frame are still. Audience members will notice it without feeling like they have been forced to notice it.Sadly, the few limitations of Griffith's technique do stick out in this one. In particular, his tendency to keep all characters involved in a scene on screen at the same time makes shots (such as the uncle hiding in a bush to spy on the courting couple) look ridiculous. Also, without point-of-view shots, some moments can be a bit confusing, as it is impossible to tell who is looking at what. But these are small worries, and the Avenging Conscience is far more coherent and realistic than the many other pictures of its day.If Judith of Bethulia was a dress-rehearsal for the massive action spectacles of Griffith's longer features, the Avenging Conscience was perhaps a dry-run for the subtle romantic drama which brought balance to those pictures. But it's also one of the most unique and remarkable shots in his canon, creeping us out with horror imagery five years before Caligari, creating tension out of guilt thirty years before Double Indemnity, with a climax that will startle those who think they know Griffith's cinema.

Just watched this interesting suspenseful D. W. Grifith film that he made before his epic The Birth of a Nation on YouTube. In this one, Henry B. Walthall plays the grown nephew of his only living relative who disapproves of his relationship with common girl Blanche Sweet (who like me was born in Chicago, Illinois). So this nephew resolves to kill him which results in his search by police. Turns out, however, it was all a dream...There's other stuff that happens here but I'll just say that with the nearly hour running time, this was a very interesting movie to watch from the silent era with some of the then experimental shots that happen here. So while The Avenging Conscience was primitive by today's standards, it's still worth a look.

Poe's psychological story "The Tell-Tale Heart" uneasily receives Griffith's trademark Victorian approach – turning the madman anti-hero of the original into a frustrated love-struck milquetoast! The broad gestures typical of Silent-film acting render the proceedings unintentionally comical now, especially where the ghostly apparition of the murdered relative is concerned – who, by the way, is fitted with an eye-patch throughout and, yet, no reference whatsoever is made to his all-important "vulture eye"!! Still, the various hallucinations at the climax – crude though they may be – are reasonably effective. Incidentally, the stilted presentation and moralistic overtones evident here also marked the other Griffith horror effort that I've watched – THE SORROWS OF Satan (1926); all I can say is that, in spite of the solid reputation THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE enjoys within the director's canon, personally I was underwhelmed by the film on a preliminary viewing.Other cinematic adaptations of the classic tale I've checked out – all of them relatively recently – are the interesting 1928 short (viewed on the very same day as the Griffith title), the so-so 1936 British feature-length version and a pretty good animated rendition of it from 1953.

Henry Walthall plays a man whose love for a young girl, played by Blache Sweet, drives him to murder his doting and overprotective uncle. His guilt drives him insane, and in the climactic scene where the detective pushes him to confession, Walthall is so overcome with visions of demons driving him to hell he is on the verge of an apoplectic fit. The most notable things in The Avenging Conscience, in addition to the obvious horrific tableaux and weird scenes of Pan with nymphs at the end, is the way Griffith draws characters in different places together through intercutting and use of props and gestures, i.e. books, pictures, prayer and other things. Perhaps he already had Intolerance in the back of his head while making this oddball adaptation of several Poe works. Also the film appears to have had some influence on other filmmakers; Chaplin's Sunnyside for example, owes something to the bit with Pan at the conclusion. My copy, projected a bit fast, runs only 56 minutes, and clearly there are missing scenes which makes for a choppy continuity. There is a still from The Avenging Conscience in Iris Barry's 1940 bio of Griffith that is from a scene which is no longer in the film. A different still once thought to be from The Avenging Conscience of Griffith directing Walthall holding a pistol to his head was actually taken on the set of Griffith's lost 1914 effort The Escape. The set dressing in The Escape is basically the same as that for the Uncle's home in The Avenging Conscience with a few things switched around, which suggests the two films were shot very closely together, or even simultaneously.