Isn't Life Wonderful

A Romance of Love and Potatoes
Paul and Inga are one of the sweetest couples ever put to film. Two starry-eyed kids in love at a time when it's downright foolish to get married, what with Paul weak from poison gas and Inga working two jobs to scrape together a pitiful dowry, and not an extra room to let anywhere in Berlin. Life is bleak, there's only turnips to eat, money is virtually worthless. So Paul secretly grows potatoes in the shipyard where he lands a job and cultivates his prized plot with utmost dedication, pinning his dreams and staking his faith on that crop which will feed the family through the winter and free him to make a life with his beloved, in the little house he built for them on a little scrap of land. But something awful happens to the potatoes, and Paul and Inga despair of ever seeing their dreams fulfilled ... yet in the end love triumphs as it should.

A simple, affecting story of refugees and postwar survival, ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL is Griffith's most personal film. It...

Griffith's Masterpiece.
ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL was D.W. Griffith's last independent production before he was forced to sell his Mamaroneck studio to help pay off mounting debts from his Revolutionary War epic AMERICA and his bad business practices. Though little known today compared to earlier films like BIRTH OF A NATION or INTOLERANCE, this little film, in my opinion, is Griffith's masterpiece. It incorporates the best elements of intimate dramas like BROKEN BLOSSOMS with a large scale backdrop like HEARTS OF THE WORLD. In fact it has been said that Griffith made this film to atone for the rabid anti-German sentiments of HEARTS (just as INTOLERANCE was supposedly made to respond to the rabid racial bias of BIRTH OF A NATION).

This story of a poor family's trials and tribulations in inflation ravaged post World War I Germany is remarkably grim and is presented realistically. Griffith came under heavy criticism for presenting a sympathetic portrait of a family in Germany (they were changed from...

Definitely a Masterwork!
I fully concur with the first reviewer that this excellent film from KINO's "Griffith Masterworks" series is a masterpiece and no doubt one of Griffith's finest. As writer, director and producer, he managed to present a very realistic portrayal of Polish refugees struggling through the Depression years after World War I in Germany, when a cut of meat cost nine million Marks and people had to live off turnips day in and day out. The setting is far from what the film's title might imply, yet we learn that true love makes the smallest joy seem like life is simply wonderful. There is no over-sentimentality, however, nor too much intense drama or suspense, but the story takes you into the lives of a young couple and their family in such an effective way that you are fully engrossed from start to finish. To help it along is a beautiful music score with piano and violin by Robert Israel featuring some lovely old German folk songs, among others. The authentic German settings and scenery...

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