True Heart Susie
- Lillian Gish: True Heart Susie
- Robert Harron: William
- Wilbur Higby: William's father
- Loyola O'Connor: Aunt Susie
- George Fawcett: the stranger
- Clarine Seymour: Bettina
- Kate Bruce: Bettina's Aunt
- Carol Dempster: Bettina's friend
- Raymond Cannon: Sporty Malone
True Heart Susie - The Story of a Plain Girl is an American silent film directed by DW Griffith from the year 1919.
Content
Susie loves since their school days the neighbor boy, William. He carves a heart with two initials in a tree, but discourages William back before the first kiss. In school, Susie is smarter than him and because he 's degrees can not afford it and she wants a smart husband, she sold against the wishes of her aunt her favorite cow and financed William secretly so that his studies. When sending the amount to the university, she has identified himself only as " philanthropist ", so William suspects a stranger in the anonymous benefactor who a short time previously had stopped in the village and prophesied a bright future.
William successfully completed his studies and returns to his home village back to where it Susie already expects modest and faithful. He sees in it after all this time a good friend while she already secretly forges wedding plans in her diary. Williams saying, men would afterwards see the painted and caparisoned although women but the simple women marry, they encouraged in their silence and modesty. When William finally succeeds the village pastor, but it is interesting for the milliner Bettina. While the likes of celebration, but also constantly worry about money, which is why she is looking for a partner. The simple William is indeed surprised when she flirts with him, but also flattered, especially since Susie has never made advances towards him. He makes Bettina just then proposed marriage, as Susie wants to skip their shadows and confess his love. Still suffering from Susie, especially since she has seen how Bettina kissed shortly before the acceptance of the application Sporty Malone.
Time passes and William must recognize that he has made a mistake with the marriage: Bettina can cook, nor she is interested in him. When he is for some time on a trip, Bettina promptly organized a celebration, appear to which all her frilly friends. Concerns Williams, who looks at the return, such as Sporty Bettina kisses can, which quickly dissipate. Susie destroyed, meanwhile the only letters she has ever received from William.
Bettina bored increasingly beside her husband and steals one evening undetected out of the house, where she pretends William headache. In reality, she goes with her friends to a party. There, they will lose the house keys, gets in the way back in a bad storm and is at home in front of a closed door. Susie asks you for help, who lies for them before William - Bettina had been up all night with her, as she had feared because of the storm. William believes the story. Bettina is seriously ill because of riding in the rain and died a short time later to have told the truth without William. The vows never to love another woman.
From Susie's aunt learns William that Susie has then financed him to study. As a little later one of Bettina's friends visits him and tells him the truth about the party shortly before Bettina's death, he no longer feels bound by his oath and confesses Susie that he only they have always loved. Both are a couple.
Production
From True Heart Susie, there is a copy stored archives of the British Film Institute in the National Film. In Germany the film was first shown on 30 November 2009 on the channel arte.
Criticism
The lexicon of the International film called True Heart Susie as "the fascinating melodrama of a self-sacrificing loving wife, David Wark Griffith in the pioneer of silent film, his diverse artistic means almost perfected. Experts see the film the real masterpiece of the director. "