Must-Watch List Comparable to the Style of The Girl Who Stayed at Home: Cult Guide

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.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Judith of Bethulia 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

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 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

Jeannette Peret, daughter of a cigar-store owner, leaves her Greenwich Village home for France in hopes of finding there the love which eludes her at home. She becomes enamored of le Bebe, a giant of a vegetable peddler, but his unsophisticated ways disillusion her. Edward Livingston, a wealthy young man from home who had spurned Jeannette, now turns up and realizes the error of his ways. But he, too, has a great flaw, and only the outbreak of war , ironically, is able to lead Jeannette to a peaceful conclusion to her quest.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

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

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

A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

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

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

Young lovers in a French village are torn apart with the coming of the Great War.

Dir: D.W. Griffith

Prevented from dating his sweetheart by his uncle, a young man turns his thoughts to murder.