Maybe it's the full orchestra score accompanying this film that makes it seem better to me, I appreciated the narrative of two stories going on, one in upstate New York concerning the love of rebel Neil Hamilton and Carol Dempster, daughter of Tory Erville Alderson, and the growing issues of revolution in Boston. It's like a trip back in time and a visit to the early American wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with realistic rustic looking communities providing seemingly accurate looking sets.
What a joke though in casting the 49 year old Lionel Barrymore as real life rebel Captain Walter Butler who was only 29 when he died. I've come to accept odd details like that and many fictional elements in historical dramas, so I view each one as a possibility and not pure fact. The film itself is every inch a treat though for viewing as producer and director D. W. Griffith makes it visibly thrilling. Real historical characters like King George, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and of course George Washington pass through, resorting in a truly patriotic saga of honor and struggle to claim freedom.
What a joke though in casting the 49 year old Lionel Barrymore as real life rebel Captain Walter Butler who was only 29 when he died. I've come to accept odd details like that and many fictional elements in historical dramas, so I view each one as a possibility and not pure fact. The film itself is every inch a treat though for viewing as producer and director D. W. Griffith makes it visibly thrilling. Real historical characters like King George, Samuel Adams, John Hancock and of course George Washington pass through, resorting in a truly patriotic saga of honor and struggle to claim freedom.