A young orphan girl, courted by an unpleasant older wealthy man who has a hold over her adoptive mother, falls in love with a young stranger at a party. Odd noises begin to be heard as a group of bootleggers clandestinely try to get away with their hidden loot.


The first time I saw One Exciting Night I expected a quaint relic; instead I got a migraine of moonlit paranoia that feels closer to Hardy’s storm-swept fatalism than to Griffith’s own sentimental parables. The film is a hinge between Victorian melodrama and the looming cynicism of noir, a hinge that creaks like every...

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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.

D.W. Griffith

D.W. Griffith
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" The first time I saw One Exciting Night I expected a quaint relic; instead I got a migraine of moonlit paranoia that feels closer to Hardy’s storm-swept fatalism than to Griffith’s own sentimental parables. The film is a hinge between Victorian melodrama and the looming cynicism of noir, a hinge that creaks like every floorboard in this cursed mansion. Carol Dempster’s Agnes is no flapper; she is a watercolor trembling to dry, and Griffith lets the camera linger until we sense the damp terror ..."
Carol Dempster
D.W. Griffith
United States


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