The Country Doctor opens and closes with a slow panning shot of pastoral countryside, the effect of which is lost until you learn that the closing shot was apparently originally given a blue tint to make sense of the final intertitle, and it's a fitting epilogue to a rather sombre piece from D. W. Griffith.
In a long-ago land filled with American Biograph logos (to foil dupers), the country doctor of the title lives an idyllic life, strolling through fields of wheat with his wife and daughter, grinning insanely and just inviting fate to deliver a fist to the solar plexus. Sure enough, little Edith, the smallest member of this ideal family unit, is stricken by some unspecified illness. She looks like she is in the process of turning after being bitten by a zombie, but little Gladys Egan gives such a wonderfully restrained performance (seriously) that we can be sure it's something much more mundane (but no less fatal) that her character is suffering from. Luckily, the doc is on hand to hold her wrist and look concerned - until, that is, a poor neighbour knocks on the door and begs him to come and tend to her own sickly child. What, we wonder, is the doctor to do?
Apart from Egan's great performance, the other key performances - Frank Powell as the doctor and Florence Lawrence as his wife - are a little overwrought even for such dramatic circumstances, and while Griffith's construction of the film is spot on you can almost hear him barking instructions to the players as they go through the melodramatic motions.
In a long-ago land filled with American Biograph logos (to foil dupers), the country doctor of the title lives an idyllic life, strolling through fields of wheat with his wife and daughter, grinning insanely and just inviting fate to deliver a fist to the solar plexus. Sure enough, little Edith, the smallest member of this ideal family unit, is stricken by some unspecified illness. She looks like she is in the process of turning after being bitten by a zombie, but little Gladys Egan gives such a wonderfully restrained performance (seriously) that we can be sure it's something much more mundane (but no less fatal) that her character is suffering from. Luckily, the doc is on hand to hold her wrist and look concerned - until, that is, a poor neighbour knocks on the door and begs him to come and tend to her own sickly child. What, we wonder, is the doctor to do?
Apart from Egan's great performance, the other key performances - Frank Powell as the doctor and Florence Lawrence as his wife - are a little overwrought even for such dramatic circumstances, and while Griffith's construction of the film is spot on you can almost hear him barking instructions to the players as they go through the melodramatic motions.