The Great Love (1918 film)

The Great Love is a 1918 American silent war drama film directed by written and D. W. Griffith who, along with scenario writer Stanner E.V. Taylor, is credited as Captain Victor Marier. The film stars George Fawcett and Lillian Gish. Set during World War I, exterior scenes were shot on location in England. The Great Love is now considered to be a lost film.

As described in a film magazine, Jim Young Harron of Youngstown, Pennsylvania, reads of the German war atrocities and decides to enlist in the British army, thus becoming a forerunner of the American forces that are subsequently to leave for the battlefields of Europe. He begins active training at a camp outside London. While enjoying a few hours of leave, he meets Susie Broadplains Gish, a young woman from Australia. She is flattered by his attentions and their friendship soon blossoms into love. Sussies one dissipation consists of walking in Pump Lane with her soldier boy. She falls heir to 20,000 pounds and at once becomes the object of much solicitude from Sir Roger Brighton Walthall, a fortune hunter. When Jim is ordered with his regiment to go to the front, he has no time to bid her adieu. Sir Rogers seeks to force his marriage before he leaves for Paris on a business trip and she accepts him. German plotters plan to destroy an arsenal at night and Sir Roger is inveigled into driving an automobile along a London road with its lights turned skyward to guide the Zeppelins. Jim, wounded and home on furlough, detects Sir Roger on the lonely road, follows and traps him in his cottage. Sir Roger turns his pistol on himself rather than be taken alive. Susie finds the great love in service for the cause of democracy and her country, with a greater love in sight.Like many American films of the time, The Great Love was subject to restrictions and cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors required cuts, in Reel 4, three scenes of mother with illegitimate child with wife of Baron, Reel 5, after the intertitle You are my wife and I stay here tonight eliminate all following scenes of man pounding bed, and, Reel 6, the intertitle Drunk with two wines champagne and passion. ........

Source: Wikipedia