"One Exciting Night" (1922) is not terribly exciting, although it has its moments. Alas, without Billy Bitzer at the camera, D.W. Griffith is not exactly the most innovative of directors. Everything is played at the camera as if the actors were on a stage. There is only one pan (broken into two shots by an insert) in the entire movie. The film is obviously angled at keen Carol Dempster fans. She is given more close-ups than the rest of the extensive cast combined. The plot is not particularly interesting, but – chiefly thanks to Dempster – it just manages to hold attention – in Alpha DVD's quite watchable cutdown 108 minutes version anyway. (The movie originally ran 128 minutes).
Review of One Exciting Night
