One of D. W. Griffith's lesser known and more modest pictures, True Heart Susie is considered a minor masterpiece by many critics. Lillian Gish stars in this tale of rural childhood and puppy love in the days of country villages and pre-Jazz Age innocence. Museum of Modern Art film curator Eileen Bowser writes, “A heroine so innocent and so self-sacrificing as Susie would not be believable at a later period.... As Lillian Gish portrays her, however, the heroine has great depth of character.... To be sure, the society portrayed here had already begun to dissolve when the film was made, so that it evoked nostalgia even then. Griffith himself seems to have felt a little defensive about its old-fashioned verities...however one cannot doubt his sincere belief in its values. (The film) has the peculiarly luminous quality of a time remembered. There is a charm and a sense of intimacy in its scenes. The style is simple and unobtrusive: it depends on the visual poetry of landscape, light and weather.”