Jon Mirsalis on Piano The Avenging Conscience is sometimes dismissed as D.W. Griffith's "oddest" film, something he tossed off while fixing his attention on his next project, The Birth of a Nation. Nevertheless, this very loose adaptation of "The Tell-Tale Heart" has both the subtle charms and psychological depths that eluded Griffith in the ambitious epics to come. Henry B. Walthall gives a varied, intense performance as a young man who finds only one impediment to his romance with the lovely "Annabel" (Blanche Sweet): his sour, disapproving guardian-uncle. And so, while watching a spider entrap a fly, he conceives the perfect crime, justified as integral to a world where "nature is one long system of murder." Presaging German cinematic expressionism, The Avenging Conscience shows all the taut, apparently effortless qualities that Griffith mastered through his 450-some shorts at the Biograph Company (which he had left the year before). To my taste, this remains the unsurpassed film adaptation of Poe. Scott Simmon