His Mother's Thanksgiving (1910) watch online HD

Robert leaves his mother's home and goes to New York. Six years later he writes he cannot spend Thanksgiving with her, so she goes to spend it with him. Feeling she would not fit in with his fancy friends, he sticks her in an upstairs room, where his elegant fiancée finds her and brings him to understand how badly he has behaved. He takes her downstairs, gives her the place of honor at the table and everything turns out well.

This Edwin S. Porter film is surprisingly heavy in titles for an Edison film for the era and for the modern audience, may be too broadly acted and title-heavy. For the era, when Griffith was still working on the subtler acting that would become standard, it is fine. The composition is excellent, as could be expected and there is a telling split-screen effect contrasting Robert's elegant house -- it looks cluttered to me -- and his mother's bare home.

In many ways this two-reel film is just made for a middle-class audience that has fought its way up from poverty. Films were still considered the theater for the poor and this movie, reminding the newly successful who they were, is a good effort.

A touching Thanksgiving story, told in a way that appeals directly to the heart. It is of the different type and affects the emotions strongly. The action of the girl is surprising, but none the less attractive for that reason. The story is good. The details are worked out moderately well, but the question will arise how a young man like this can have such an elaborate home. City life is not like that. Thanksgivings are not eaten in homes of that type by young men. Further, while it is common enough for sweethearts to invite their lovers to Thanksgiving dinners in their homes, here is a distinct novelty. The young man has a home and he invites the young woman there. Perhaps the novelty justifies the innovation, but the feeling that here is something quite out of the ordinary cannot be overcome. Of course it is not impossible, but it is, to say the least, quite unusual. - The Moving Picture World, December 10, 1910