The Idol Dancer

"The Idol Dancer" is one of D.W. Griffith's two South Seas dramas made in Florida; "The Love Flower" is the other. It's a low point in his career--before his resurgence with "Way Down East". The story involves missionaries trying to make natives wear pants. Richard Barthelmess, as an alcoholic beachcomber, and Clarine Seymour, as the idol dancer, are briefly amusing, but the boring missionaries and the film's questionable morals soon ruin that.

Griffith's direction is prosaic and slipshod. The climax is derivative of "The Birth of a Nation", and like that film "The Idol Dancer" is racist, too, but has nothing to make itself worthwhile despite it. This one deserves its place as one of Griffith's lesser and ignored, or forgotten, pictures.