Deep Archive Finds in the Vein of America: Cult Guide

Dir: D.W. Griffith

John Logan leaves his parents and sweetheart in bucolic Happy Valley to make his fortune in the city. Those he left behind become miserable and beleaguered in his absence, but after several years he returns, a wealthy man.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Great Love perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

An idealistic young American during World War I, itching to fight the Germans and not wanting to wait until the U. S. joined the war, journeys to Canada and enlists in the British army. He is sent for training to England, and then to the front in France, where he is wounded. Returned back to England to recuperate from his wounds, he falls in love with the daughter of an Australian minister.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

A romantic bandit named Alvarez, wanted for raids on the mining camps of the California gold rush in 1849, is reformed by the love of a good woman.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Scarlet Days perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

An orphan girl is given shelter by a farm family, but soon finds herself in the clutches of a murderous farmer and his wife.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

A dramatic comparison between the mating habits of animals and the way humans choose their own partners.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Greatest Question perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

John Howard Payne at his most miserable point in life, writes a song which becomes popular and inspires other people at some point in their lives.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

The Stoneman family finds its friendship with the Camerons affected by the Civil War, both fighting in opposite armies. The development of the war in their lives plays through to Lincoln's assassination and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Escape perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A religious woman seeks to save her people from destruction by seducing and murdering the enemy leader, but her plans get complicated once she falls for him.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

The Biograph Company's reissue of D. W. Griffith's "Judith of Bethulia" (1914), misleadingly re-titled and expanded with previously deleted footage.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

Susie, a plain young country girl, secretly loves a neighbor boy, William. She believes in him and sacrifices much of her own happiness to promote his own ambitions, all without his knowledge. Eventually he rises to a position of success and sophistication, and Susie realizes that she has through her own efforts raised him to a level where he is inaccessible to her.