Watch Swords and Hearts

D.W. Griffith packs an epic feature's worth of marauding, heartbreak and syrupy nostalgia into this short Civil War romance. Hugh Frazier (Wilfred Lucas) is the son of a wealthy tobacco farmer who leaves the plantation to fight for the Confederacy. He loves a well-heeled belle named Irene Lambert (Claire McDowell) but it's Jennie Baker (Dorothy West), the daughter of the "poor white class," who frets over Hugh. When he steals away from the battlefield to visit Claire, Jennie gallantly shields him from Union bushwhackers, diverting the enemy and proving herself a fine shot in the process. Griffith's dramatic use of natural landscapes burnishes the film's increasingly maudlin story with pastoral grace. - Max Goldberg