Popular reviews

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  Review by Hayden Welch

  So massively engaging and wholesome.

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  Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★★

  Griffith suspense formula with extra added heartwarming life lesson. Reuses the baby-out-the-window gimmick from The Cord Of Life (1909).

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  Review by Michael_Elliott ★★★

  A rich miser (Adolph Lestina) lives in a poor building where he meets a young girl named Kathy (Ynex Seabury) and reluctantly gives her some food. Jules (Lionel Barrymore) is a thief who is ran out of town but on his way out he steals some food and winds up at the same location as Kathy. Before long a couple thieves go to rob the miser.

  THE MISER'S HEART has quite a bit going on in it and once again D.W. Griffith manages to take a simple story and do wonders with it. The film's climax is basically the girl hanging out a window facing death if the miser doesn't give the crooks his safe combination. The sequence is shot…

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  Review by Rick Burin ★★★½

  A fun Griffith short, with an adorable first half about the friendship between a famished little girl and a sad old miser, and an extremely silly second in which he's targeted by robbers, attracting the attention of sleepy minor-league thief, Lionel Barrymore. It's a shame that its abundant charm and easy naturalism rather evaporates midway through, but it's still one of the director's best early works, with some truly lovely little moments.

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  Review by James Carrigy ★★★★

  Griffith strikes again with another of his no-nonsense, genuinely suspenseful thrillers. This time around, I noticed his really great emphasis on space and character (Although his great talent for editing is still very much on display here). But there’s a really heavy focus on how the main residential building is laid out, and how that then ties back into the actual plot itself (Similar to the railyard in Lonedale Operator).
  
  And then there’s that one great little moment when we see Barrymore’s thief introduced for the first time, and how he steals a piece of food from a snobbish shop owner, not just a means of establishing him as a loveable rogue, but also then later own having its own…

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  Review by Richard Cross ★★★

  Griffith hangs a young kid from a window for the second time in this ok drama. The child is used by a couple of robbers to force her miserly old neighbour to reveal the combination of a safe he keeps in his ramshackle flat. Lionel Barrymore (looking like one of Harry Enfield’s scousers) makes one of his earliest screen appearances as a jewel thief who comes to the rescue, and Donald Crisp plays a copper.

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  Review by ReCreation ★★★

  This is the second time I've watched D.W. Griffith dangle a toddler out of a window. It was crazy watching this movie after JUST talking about how contrived and ridiculous Griffth's plots are. This movie jumps to 11 in the blink of an eye, going from an old man sharing a pastry with his downstairs neighbors kid, to that old man's apartment being broken into by hardcore burglars. And this seamless transition is achieved through a crazy clunky title card. I mean, it's entertaining and ridiculous... but it's not good. Especially after just seeing Feuillade so deftly handle plot turns.

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  Review by Alex Valentino ★★½

  En poco más de cien películas, Griffith no sólo inventó el montaje paralelo, sino que también lo exploró hasta sus límites en los que cualquier tipo de suspenso se diluía en una aplicación de personajes y situaciones, estirándolo hasta volverlo irritante, una maniobra barata para extraer emoción de lxs espectadorxs como jugo de un limón. Mientras más sofisticada es su técnica, más se parece al cine contemporáneo, y paradójicamente, menos interesante a nuestros ojos modernos. Nos quedan sus mensajes, que a veces (como en este caso) no son más complejos que en el fondo todxs somos buenxs. Aquí funcionaría mejor si los personajes de la niña y el prestamista estuvieran más desarrollados, pero Griffith, quizá buscando variar la fórmula, también incluye varias escenas con un chorro que termina salvando a lxs otrxs dos de un par de ladrones. Una trama desenfocada, lo cual no es tan inusual: inventar la gramática del cine también involucra cometer tus propios errores.

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  Review by SCP_5073 ★★½

  Kathy did nothing wrong.

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  Review by Pedro ★★★½

  Legenda em pt-br (correções e modificações na legenda do bosco60)
  youtu.be/ax9ReGKqqGQ

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  Review by 8BeanSoup ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Little Kathy's mother is ill, so she plays by herself. A man takes pity on her and gives her a piece of bread. Meanwhile, the police tell Jules the Thief to leave town, but Jules continues to rip people off. He meets Kathy after absconding with some food.

  Rumors about a miser's money have attracted a couple of thieves. They break in, tie the man up, and try to open the safe. When they can't, they threaten the man. Kathy appears; she thinks it's a game. They tie her up and threaten her, but the miser still won't open it. They threaten to throw her out the window. One of the criminals dangles her out the window. Jules the Thief…

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  Review by mjccrimson ★★★½

  I wasn’t expecting much from this, but Griffith somehow manages to restrain himself just enough here, despite dangling a toddler outside a tenement window. Solid juxtaposition of characters and I liked how most of it was from the little girl’s perspective.