The Enemy on AllMovie

The Enemy was based on the rabidly anti-war play by Channing Pollock. Lillian Gish plays Pauli Amdt, the granddaughter of August Behrend (George Fawcett), a pacifistic Viennese schoolteacher. Pauli marries student Carl Behrend (Ralph Forbes), who almost immediately thereafter marches off to World War I. We say "almost," because Pauli has been rendered pregnant. When her grandfather loses his job due to political pressure, poor Pauli is forced into prostitution to provide food for her baby. Things get darker when Carl is reported missing in action. A happy ending did not diminish the dramatic clout of the earlier scenes, though when The Enemy was first released, many critics complained that Lillian Gish's performance paled in comparison to that of Fay Bainter, who starred in the original Broadway production.