It's always interesting to watch silent movies, if only to see how overdone the acting tends to be. With only a few scattered printed titles, the story depends on the actors' ability to project emotions. They usually give it their all. They certainly do in this film.
It's the beginning of the Civil War and all the Southern men of Cotton Creek are enlisting except Charles Ray, who decides to skip the war and hide at home among the women, the darkies, and his rigid old man. No Achilles he. He's not sulking, just scared to death and he knows it, and soon everybody else does too. His proud father, an ex colonel, played by Frank Keenan, forces Ray to enlist at gunpoint. Keenan's performance is something to behold. With every move, every change of facial expression, he seems struggling to overcome an advanced stage of rigor mortis.
The story itself could have come from an early John Wayne Western. Ray deserts the army but redeems himself, just as the Young Man did in "The Red Badge of Courage." The South wins, with the help of the loyal slaves who tend the Big House. There is really only one battle scene, and it looks as if the budget was generous but it's confusingly edited. We know the Confederates won because a title tells us so. Some of the scenes are really slowly paced. We get the point long before the scene ends.
Southern values usually prevail in these movies, whether it's Buster Keaton or "The Birth of a Nation". When they fail, it's shown as a tragedy, as in "Gone With the Wind." Some regional resentment still exists in the South, unlike Germany, a country in which WWII never happened. The South was settled by Cavaliers, not the Puritans of the North, and the Cavaliers brought their culture of honor with them. When something happened, you settled the score yourself. You didn't go squealing to a central government.
Jefferson Davis had a hell of a time ruling the Confederacy. There were so many challenges to duels that he had to be careful to post his officers far apart from their enemies. And he had to depend on states to provide volunteer troops. He couldn't draft anyone because the whole point of the Confederacy was states rights and a weak central government. That's what a "confederacy" is -- a kind of gentleman's agreement to cooperate.
In the Northern state, Charles Ray would simply have been drafted unless his father was rich enough to pay a few hundred dollars for a substitute.
It's the beginning of the Civil War and all the Southern men of Cotton Creek are enlisting except Charles Ray, who decides to skip the war and hide at home among the women, the darkies, and his rigid old man. No Achilles he. He's not sulking, just scared to death and he knows it, and soon everybody else does too. His proud father, an ex colonel, played by Frank Keenan, forces Ray to enlist at gunpoint. Keenan's performance is something to behold. With every move, every change of facial expression, he seems struggling to overcome an advanced stage of rigor mortis.
The story itself could have come from an early John Wayne Western. Ray deserts the army but redeems himself, just as the Young Man did in "The Red Badge of Courage." The South wins, with the help of the loyal slaves who tend the Big House. There is really only one battle scene, and it looks as if the budget was generous but it's confusingly edited. We know the Confederates won because a title tells us so. Some of the scenes are really slowly paced. We get the point long before the scene ends.
Southern values usually prevail in these movies, whether it's Buster Keaton or "The Birth of a Nation". When they fail, it's shown as a tragedy, as in "Gone With the Wind." Some regional resentment still exists in the South, unlike Germany, a country in which WWII never happened. The South was settled by Cavaliers, not the Puritans of the North, and the Cavaliers brought their culture of honor with them. When something happened, you settled the score yourself. You didn't go squealing to a central government.
Jefferson Davis had a hell of a time ruling the Confederacy. There were so many challenges to duels that he had to be careful to post his officers far apart from their enemies. And he had to depend on states to provide volunteer troops. He couldn't draft anyone because the whole point of the Confederacy was states rights and a weak central government. That's what a "confederacy" is -- a kind of gentleman's agreement to cooperate.
In the Northern state, Charles Ray would simply have been drafted unless his father was rich enough to pay a few hundred dollars for a substitute.