Henry King was one of the great exponents of rural Americana in films such as Tol'able David and State Fair. At a time when studio-created artifice was at a height, King took his crew to his home state of Virginia to shoot Tol'able David on location; the result is an extraordinarily evocative film in which poetry is firmly rooted in the real, and drama is built of spontaneous and believable emotions that skirt the story's melodrama. Richard Barthelmess lends his quiet intensity to the role of David, a lad who witnesses the death of his father and the crippling of his brother when their quiet backwoods farming community is invaded by three moronically evil brothers. Torn between fear and duty, David finally battles and defeats his Goliath. A milestone in the American narrative film, Tol'able David's influence extended to the developing Soviet cinema; V. I. Pudovkin, in particular, wrote at length about King's skilled use of the plastic medium at hand to create a story by “showing, not telling.” (Later in this series we will concentrate on the Soviet silents.)