United Artists; 1931; dir: D.W. Griffith; cast: Hal Skelly, Zita Johann, Evelyn Baldwin, Edna Hagan, Charlotte Wynters. VHS edition distributed by Kino on Video's "Griffith Masterworks Series Two" collection, black-and-white, 77 mins, like new condition with no flaws. Shot with direct sound on a miniscule budget in rented studios and on public streets in the Brox (and featuring a cast of virtual unknowns), THE STRUGGLE offers poetic closure to D.W. Griffith's singularly distinguished career. A departure from the historical super-productions for which had had become known, this film allowed him to return to the minimalist production values of the early Biograph shorts with which he first found renown and reunited him with the husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Anita Loos and John Emerson that provided him with the scenarios for his earliest successes.

Stage actor Hal Skelly stars as Jimmie Wilson, a hard-working American everyman who falls victim to the debilitating affliction of alcoholism. No stranger to the destructive influence of drink, Griffith pulls no punches in dramatizing its potential horrors, especially in the terrifying climax in which Jimmie, tormented by delirium termors, attacks his trusting daughter (Edna Hagan) in the hovel that was once their happy home. Yet THE STRUGGLE is hardly a didactic condemnation of liquor, but a clever film (inspired by Zola's L'ASSOMMOIR) laced with social criticism and buoyed by Griffith's brand of tender humanism.

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