Word: griffith
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...RARELY sees completely integrated films, works whose every element contributes to a single expression. Few directors reach the maturity and control necessary to such a work. Sorrows of Satan (1927) finds Griffith once more transcending himself, leaving behind the formal means by which he ordered his earlier dramas for a simpler, more direct style. Sorrows is so unified that its mood and meaning can be assigned to no single aspect of that style...
SPECIFIC sequences are handled similarly. Like Griffith's, or indeed most any director's. they hinge on the decisions of the characters within them. the completion or failure of an intended action. In such scenes Griffith cuts between the entirely separate emotional qualities and quantities expressed by the characters' faces, giving each a completely individual moral position. Splitting the drama's entire moral position. Splitting the drama's entire moral scheme into separate characters. he lets their conflicts play it out. Seastrom deals in shared emotions, unified atmospheres, and his characters' decisions are expressed in walking through rooms...
...sequence Gish. as Hester Prynne, pursues Lars Hansen (Arthur Dimmesdale) to and fro in an attempt to make him talk to her. Griffith would have depicted his decision by cutting to their two faces: Seastrom cuts to their feet walking along the country road. The physical aspect of the decision, the characters' actions in their real setting, takes over from Griffith's spiritual. abstract tendency. Yet Seastrom's acting style remains melodramatic. If anything Lars Hansen is cruder than Griffith's heroes: his gestures are slower and broader. Where Griffith would concentrate on the face. Seastrom gives us the whole...
Indeed, Seastrom made a remarkably calm film from a rather violent novel. largely by establishing and developing unified situations. The opening sets the scene and its characters in one long track along the village street. moving back as Puritans walk to church. To establish a social milieu Griffith would have cut between different characters. their homes, their personal peculiarities. Seastrom needs only one long shot that shows the Puritan villagers in a characteristic action and place. He uses the setting strongly and gives us masses of people never developed as characters. This leaves the drama far fewer contending moral...
Here he loses the variousness of tone and emphasis in Hawthorne and Griffith. He builds a drama of natural behavior in a specific social, rather than ideal, setting. Griffith's abstractions and idealization disappear and with them the need to assault the audience with quick cutting to put across the characters' emotions. A much more direct realization of his material characterizing Seastrom's work. makes this work simply a powerful rendition of a story of thwarted love...