kidboots This movie was part of a group of Griffith's rural romances (also "A Romance of Happy Valley", "The Great Love"). At this time in his career (after "Intolerance") Griffith was trying to recoup financially, his debt and bank loan entrapment had already begun so he begun filming a series of less ambitious but lyrical little films about his boyhood in Kentucky. Ever the showman he tried to add stature to these smaller films with wordy pretentious titles. "True Heart Susie" opens with a title that proclaims every incident in it is taken from life - Charles Dickens would be surprised as "True Heart Susie" is a mixture of "Great Expectations" and "David Copperfield" - and goes on to dedicate itself to "All the Women of the World who wait for the Great Love that Never Comes"!!Susie (Gish) has an unrequited love for William (Harron) who only half heartedly returns her friendship. She is secretly scrimping and saving to put him through college but he mistakenly thinks his benefactor is a stranger who once passed through their village and promised to help. Susie even sells her beloved cow, Daisy, to start William on his way.Insufferable William comes home from college sporting a moustache and none the wiser about who his benefactor was. He sternly tells Susie "men flirt with painted girls but always marry plain ones" - if only he practiced what he preached. Of course he is fair game for Bettina, the little milliner from Chicago, who believes thoroughly in "paint, powder and tight skirts". She was played by bewitching Clarine Seymour and steals the movie, in my opinion. Clarine gave the film some much needed vivacity. She wasn't a typical Griffith idealization of southern womanhood, being very Clara Bow like, and who knows what type of career she would have had if she had lived. Even at this stage Griffith was heavily promoting his young protégé Carol Dempster as a logical successor to Lillian Gish, even though she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag and would almost destroy his reputation with her inept and wooden performances. In this movie she has a definite extra part as Bettina's fun loving friend.How does William come to have this fascination over women - perhaps he is the only marriageable man in town!! It is clear he is putty in Bettina's hands and to her he is only a "punk minister" but as her money is gone she must marry someone. Marriage isn't the bliss that William imagined it to be. Bettina is a shrew who flies into rages and break plates (slipshod continuity, she picks up a plain plate but the plate that is broken on the floor is a Willow pattern) - a real contrast when they have Sunday dinner at Susie's and William has his first decent meal since before his marriage. Bettina certainly finds married life a drag and when she sneaks out to a party and is caught in the rain, she loses her keys and is forced to seek shelter at Susie's.I agree the strength of the film is in it's performers, Lillian Gish's Susie seems so innocent and trusting, that William's slighting of her gains him little audience sympathy. Robert Harron's metamorphosis when he returns from college shows what a mature and subtle actor he could be. Gone is the gawkiness and it is a tribute to his acting that in my opinion when he marries Bettina, he starts to engage audience sympathy. The lovely lyricalness continues almost to the end when a closing title hopes they will be happy and asks the audience to imagine Susie and William looking back to their earlier innocent years.

xtina09 True Heart Susie is an absolutely adorable film! This 1919 film is a cute love story that follows the lives of Susie and William. Lillian Gish does a great job playing the sweet and innocent character of Susie who is secretly in love with Robert Harron's character William Jenkins. This film starts when the two are still in school and in their adolescent years and follows their story into adulthood. Susie proves to be anything other than just the "plain" girl when she goes above and beyond to make William, her true love, reach his happiness. This movie is very entertaining, combining romance and drama so that the audience is left in suspense and eager to find out if and when Susie and William will somehow end up together in the end. From the eyes of someone who has grown up with the latest technology and special effect films, True Heart Susie is a film that was able to capture my attention and hold onto it until the very end of this 87 minute long film. Despite it being a silent film, the cast of True Heart Susie was able to convey true emotions through their actions and facial expressions so that the audience can easily understand and interpret what the characters are thinking and filming. True Heart Susie is not a color film, however, because of tinting is not black and white. Tinted print is used to show the time, place, and mood in this film. Orange tint is used whenever the setting is indoors or to show that it is daytime. Blue tint is used to express that it is nighttime. The art direction and editing are great. The famous D.W. Griffith shows just how talented he is with the camera and his art direction in True Heart Susie.

K Bunck The second that William married Bettina I knew she'd have to die. I'm not being melodramatic just truthful this movie was made and takes place in the early 20th century; no one got divorced back then, the only way that marriage was going to break up was for either William or Bettina to die. I only hoped for Susie's sake that it would be Bettina. Although, with the careless fashion that William treated her love and sacrifices it might have been better for Susie, if William was the one to die. Susie believed that her happiness was directly related to William, this displays the mindset of the time that women need men to be happy, and is proved as the movies "happy ending" has Susie marrying William, and though it is no longer the mindset of the American public that a women needs a man to be happy, it is still a myth perpetrated by Hollywood as most films still contain this classic "happy ending". If William had died and was out of the picture Susie might have been able to live her life for herself, instead of for William. Throughout the movie every action Susie makes is directly related to William. Whether she's selling her cow to send him to school, or protecting his wife, all her choices are made with William in mind. We never see what Susie wants, besides of course, her desire to marry Williams, which might just have stemmed from a childhood crush; that would have passed if she had not made it her life goal to make sure William got everything he wanted. We learn very little about Bettina except that she's selfish and thinks only of herself, a direct opposite to Susie, who cares only for William and her Aunt. This comparison between Bettina and Susie is alluded to several times throughout the movie, each time with Susie coming out on top. I believe the director did this to keep us from bonding with Bettina, so we would not care when she died and resent Susie her happiness. All in all not a bad movie, pay special attention to the title cards they're hilarious.

lyolyok In this sweet and simple melodrama for 1919, Lillian Gish shines. She carries the entire film to be frank, as the main heroine Suzie who pines for the dense and very average boy William; whose head is easily turned by that of "painted" women. However, because Suzie is so sweetly naïve, determined, and caring, the audience is sympathetic to her and her plight. You want her to get the guy, or a better one in any case. William is so horribly oblivious, but not a bad sort. Even the "other woman" Battina is only trying to find a solution to get out of her boring life. I find it quaint that after realizing his mistake, William tries to make the best of his marriage to the town girl that he has chosen. It really paints a good picture of the times, when family was the most important thing and divorce was next to unheard of. Suzie even grooms herself her entire life so that she can become the ideal house wife, because that's what was expected for girls of that time. Even so, miss Gish shines as the hopelessly in love school girl. She has real emotion in all of her close ups and is able to exude both humor and sadness in the lapse of a few seconds. The supporting cast is just average, but it doesn't matter because she is the focus of almost every scene anyway. It is an interesting study of the silent era as well. The use of irony and subtle humor in the title cards adds a little chuckle here and there as well. But if you're going to watch it, watch it for her and her alone. She does so well, in fact, that I would go so far as recommend it to watch, just for her performance.