Home, Sweet Home on AllMovie

When D.W. Griffith left the Biograph studio in 1913 to become head of production at Reliance-Mutual, he took along his cameraman Billy Bitzer and many of his Biograph actors. At Mutual, he directed only four films before moving on to bigger things. Home Sweet Home was the third of his four self-directed productions. Like his later super-production Intolerance, Home Sweet Home tells four separate stories connected by a common theme -- although in this film the stories are not intercut with each other. The Prologue concerns an episode from the life of John Howard Payne (Henry B. Walthall), the early 19th-century actor famed for composing the song Home Sweet Home. The next three sections utilize the ballad in illustrating the part it plays in the lives of different people. The tone of the stories changes from section to section -- the Prologue and Part III are tragic, while Part I and Part IV are melodramas with happy endings. Then there is a bizarre throw-back to a medieval morality play: the Epilogue shows Payne in the Pit of Hell, struggling against Lust and Greed, staggering up a stairway to get to his sweetheart, who is now an angel.