Thomas Ince, the Auteur
(originally posted on IMDb 17 February 2005)

Thomas H. Ince was one of the independents, who established Hollywood as the motion-picture capital of the world to avoid the strong arm of the Motion Picture Patents Company. He introduced the studio system: the assembly-line production of movies headed by producers. William S. Hart Westerns are one of Inceville's most notable products. They're certainly better than this, "Civilization", which, I suppose, must have been a more personal product than usual for Ince, with its obvious pacifist message.

In this fictionalization of the Great War, a German commander commits treason, sabotages his submarine and kills the crew to prevent the torpedoing of the Lusitania. It takes Christ's second coming to affect the German King, though. The story is ridiculous, with overdone morality and sentimentality, mawkish Christian allegory and over-use of intertitles. On the other hand, there is some nice photography, and the battle scenes, with explosions and smoke, are well edited, but that's merely the craftsmanship one should expect from the assembly line.