Review of Orphans of the Storm (1921) by Matt K — 16 Dec 2009

A long slog, but with some great sequences. The last half hour or so is really thrilling actually, and shows Griffith's talent for cross cutting to create suspense. The rest of the film has extremely distracting editing though.

There were so many mis-matches in continuity, like someone would step back in the wide shot, then do the exact same motion again in the close-up. It was really obvious all the time. I found this especially jolting and distracting because Griffith supposedly was a big fan of match-cutting on action.

I didn't see any of that here, almost every cut was discontinuous in some way. Also, this film could easily lose 30 minutes and not actually lose any story. The story is actually pretty thrilling and complex and interesting, it's a shame that the over-emphasizing of every little detail gets in the way of the bigger picture.