In one of his most tortured Biographs, Griffith saves his wildest moment for his final shot, where his immovable plot meets the irresistible metaphors that go with blindness and light. In the front parlor of his home, the bandages of a blinded chemist are about to be removed. He is flanked by the two women in his life – his frivolous wife, who is ready to leave him because she finds his blindness stifling; and his long-suffering sister-in-law, who secretly loves him and who, thanks to his blindness, has fooled him into thinking she is his wife. The bandages come off and he sees – i.e., understands – who has been caring for him. But his wife, recoiling, knocks down the heavy parlor drapes and the blaze of sunlight blinds her husband again – this time permanently. Aghast, the wife runs out, leaving her re-blinded husband with the woman who will now be his eyes for the foreseeable future. Overwhelmed, he kneels down and kisses the hem of her dress.
In a single amazing shot, Griffith (with his prolific writer Stanner E.V. Taylor) manages to jam together the time-honored connections between moral, emotional, and physical blindness. What starts as a story about a chemist blinded by one of his experiments develops as a tale of two sisters: one who basks in the bright lights and glitter of high society; the other whose selfless devotion makes her literally invisible, playing off her would-be lover’s multiple forms of blindness by masquerading as a wife with the help of her sister’s discarded ring.
For post-moderns (and who among us has escaped?) what leaps out is the tension between the overt moralism of the film and the medium in which Griffith is working. As Scott Simmon notes in his first-rate chapter on the Biograph woman’s film in The Films of D.W. Griffith, the movie takes an unambiguous stand against the corruption of superficial sight and gaudy entertainment. In case we miss the point, the intertitles are there to help, as is Griffith’s intercutting between scenes of parties and receptions with scenes of care and nurture. But as a commercial filmmaker, Griffith inevitably traffics in exactly the world of display and glamour he disparages. As Simmon writes, “‘A flash of light’ twice blinds the chemist, but the phrase also defines the silent film apparatus, and the wife [in all her finery] is put on display for us, come what may.”
This light-obsessed film culminates in a wonderfully compressed and sublimely silly coup de theatre that brings the contradictions to the fore, and arguably lets in more than Griffith knows. The dazzling burst of sunlight that the celebrity sister (by now a comic-opera diva) dramatically exposes is a moment bristling with ironies and multiple meanings. Like the Cooper Hewitt lights (which in fact produce the flamboyant ultra-theatrical “sunlight” effect), the sun that re-blinds the chemist also puts the other sister in the spotlight, making her stand in stark relief from the other characters. However, the exposé of the noble sister (who in this single moment shines brighter than her sister) is mainly a way to dramatize the superiority of the shadows. The re-blinding brings with it both insight – the chemist’s recognition and appreciation of true virtue – and a means for matching the noble heroine who prefers to work unseen with a partner whose blindness gives her the perfect opportunity to continue her self-sacrificing mission.

Russell Merritt