The Battle Of The Sexes
by D.W. Griffith
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Belle Bennett, Don Alvarado, Jean Hersholt, Phyllis Haver, Sally O'NeilDirector: D.W. Griffith
Cinematographer: G.W. Bitzer
Cinematographer: Karl Struss
Editor: James Smith
Writer: Daniel Carson Goodman
Writer: Gerrit J. Lloyd
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-08-29
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: United Artists
Movie Reviews of The Battle Of The Sexes
Movie Review: The Griffith Sensibility
Summary: 5 Stars
This is mature Griffith, an elegant and entertaining film. But despite the engaging performance of a vivacious Phyllis Haver, THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES is not IT. Nor may it remind us of any single jazz-age movie as much as it does the plaintive songs of Henry Clay Work, in particular "Come Home Father," a piece far better suited to Griffith's nineteenth-century sensibility than the jittery dance music of the nightclub orchestra shown here. Did 1928 audiences yawn during this movie? Not a chance. But some women, accustomed to the grittier depictions of families in films by Lois Weber and others, may have walked out of the theater shaking their heads, unwilling to give Jean Hersholt's philandering husband the slack that Griffith believes he deserves.
But life, the film reminds us, is complicated. Hersholt is clearly a fool, and his scenes with Haver, the gold-digging neighbor, are exploited for comedy. The laughs don't follow him home, however. In the Hersholt apartment, Griffith surprises us by letting his camera linger with heartbreaking patience on the stilled expression of Belle Bennett, the betrayed wife, as her realization that her marriage is over moves her from bewilderment to despair. It's a devastating scene.
Such moments remind us not only of the curious power of Griffith's camera but of how far he had traveled in the days since Biograph. A flamboyant ham in his early stage work, he learned from Mary Pickford the lesson that only gradually transformed actors' performances on the silent screen: acting is best accomplished by not being acted. In THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES he is still the master, and we would all be poorer without this twilight demonstration of his incredible talent.
Summary of The Battle Of The Sexes
D. W. Griffith is properly esteemed as "The Father of Film" from his years of discovery making short films at the pioneer Biograph Company and for such pioneering features as "The Birth of a Nation," "Intolerance," "Broken Blossoms," Way Down East" and "Orphans of the Storm" (all available on DVD from Image Entertainment), but his later films--several of them lost or almost unavailable--were far less critically hailed. Griffith's 1928 comedy-drama "The Battle of the Sexes" proves to be the exception. It is the story of a middle-aged magnate (Jean Hersholt) who makes a fool of himself when he strays from his loving but frowsy wife (Belle Bennett) and children (Billy Bakewell and Sally O'Neil) into the cynical arms of a gold-digger (Phyllis Haver) and her dishonest lover (Don Alvarado). As these characters are hurt and healed, Griffith expertly draws fine lines between tragedy and comedy, and his skill makes all the difference between emotional satisfaction and formulaic melodrama.A middle-aged magnate strays from his loving but frowsy wife and children into the cynical arms of a gold-digger and her dishonest lover in D.W. Griffith's silent comedy-drama.
D.W. Griffith
Sally O'Neil, Jean Hersholt, Belle Bennett, Billy Bakewell, Phyllis Haver, Don Alvarado
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D.W. Griffith is hardly known for his light touch or his sense of humor, but both of these hidden talents are evident in this sexy romantic comedy. Griffith shows a smooth, fluid style and a sophisticated hand in the story of a middle-aged family man entranced by a gold-digging jazz baby. Character actor Jean Hersholt (yes, the same one the Oscars named the Humanitarian Award for) is a frumpy, bespectacled middle class husband and an unassuming Wall Street bigwig wooed by blond floozy Phyllis Haver. He's got a family and she has a boyfriend (an oily gigolo described as "the wrong answer to a maiden's prayer"), but why should that stop a little after-hours fun? This being a Griffith film, the story winds up with a melodramatic climax, but he also displays a sly wit and the winking, thoroughly modern sensibility reminiscent of Ernst Lubitsch's cultured Continental touch. From the clever and elegant introductory scene to the carnivalesque treatment of a lover's tiff to the sentimental coda, Griffith's jazz age sex comedy is lovely, luscious, and more wry than you'd expect from the old man of Victorian melodrama. --Sean Axmaker
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