One of Griffith's early directing efforts, Romance of a Jewess already shows some of the themes that would interest Griffith for most of his career: the clash of both races and generations, Jewish ghetto life, and the sentimental position the beloved mother apparently holds in the life of all men.
The story is simple and eternal. A young Jewish woman, working in the pawnshop owned by her recently widowed father - we see the mother's death in what seems to be a somewhat superfluous scene - rebels against the arranged marriage organised for her by him, and chooses a native Indian bookseller, much to her father's displeasure. The father banishes her from his sight, but he and his daughter are fated to be reunited under tragic circumstances...
The film is fairly ordinary, but clearly well directed for the time, although the acting is still very much of the exaggerated gesture school. Only in the brief scenes in which Griffith takes his camera out onto the real streets of New York does the film truly come alive.
It was interesting to see the American Bioscope logo clearly visible on the wall of the pawnshop, put there by the makers in an attempt to stop other distributors from duping the film (copying it and passing it off under their own name - a practice that was common in the wild, early days of cinema). It's also amusing to note that, even though a number of years pass during the telling of the story, the old pawnbroker still hasn't managed to shift that guitar hanging on the wall...
