An Unseen Enemy

An Unseen Enemy

TRAGEDY AND TORMENT...INNOCENCE ASSAILED...An Exceptional Photoplay

NR 1912 · 16 min · ★ 5.6 · Drama, Thriller

The physician's death orphans his two adolescent daughters. Their older brother is able to convert some of the doctor's small estate to cash. But it is late in the day, and with the banks closed he stores the money in his father's household safe. The slatternly housekeeper, aware of the money, enlists a criminal acquaintance to crack the safe. She attempts to get into the adjacent room where the sisters tremble in fear, but finds that the door is locked. The drunken housekeeper menaces them by brandishing a gun through a hole in the wall.

Directed by D.W. Griffith · Written by Edward Acker

Your Rating

Cast

Lillian Gish Eldest Sister
Dorothy Gish Youngest Sister
Robert Harron The Boyfriend
Elmer Booth The Brother
Grace Henderson The Maid
Harry Carey The Safecracker
Adolph Lestina In Boardinghouse (uncredited)
Walter Miller The Brother's Friend (uncredited)
Antonio Moreno On Bridge (uncredited)

Make it a double feature

3h 33m together

An Unseen Enemy

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

Both from D.W. Griffith.

More from D.W. GriffithSee all →

Charlie Chaplin, The Genius of Liberty

Charlie Chaplin, The Genius of Liberty · 2020

Charlie Chaplin, The Genius of Liberty

MovieDocumentary

The whole world knows him. Burlesque comedy genius, popular actor, author, director, producer, composer, choreographer, Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) used his talent to serve an ideal of justice and freedom. But his best scenario was his own destiny, a story written into the political and artistic history of the 20th century.

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages · 1916

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

MovieDramaHistory

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

Way Down East

Way Down East · 1920

MovieDramaRomance

A naive country girl is tricked into a sham marriage by a wealthy womanizer, then must rebuild her life despite the taint of having borne a child out of wedlock.

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl · 1919

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl

MovieDramaRomance

The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

Orphans of the Storm

Orphans of the Storm · 1921

Orphans of the Storm

MovieDramaHistory

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.

San Francisco

San Francisco · 1936

MovieDramaRomance

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

The King of Kings

The King of Kings · 1927

The King of Kings

MovieDramaHistory

The King of Kings is the Greatest Story Ever Told as only Cecil B. DeMille could tell it. In 1927, working with one of the biggest budgets in Hollywood history, DeMille spun the life and Passion of Christ into a silent-era blockbuster. Featuring text drawn directly from the Bible, a cast of thousands, and the great showman’s singular cinematic bag of tricks, The King of Kings is at once spectacular and deeply reverent—part Gospel, part Technicolor epic.

Judith of Bethulia

Judith of Bethulia · 1914

Judith of Bethulia

MovieDramaHistory

Griffith adapts the story of the Apocryphal Book of Judith to the screen. During the siege of the Jewish city of Bethulia by the Assyrian tyrant Holofernes, a widow named Judith forms a plan to stop the war as her people suffer in starvation, nearly ready to surrender.

The Lonely Villa

The Lonely Villa · 1909

The Lonely Villa

MovieThrillerDrama

A gang of thieves lure a man out of his home so that they can rob it and threaten his wife and children. The family barricade themselves in an interior room, but the criminals are well-equipped for breaking in. When the father finds out what is happening, he must race against time to get back home.

The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation · 1915

The Birth of a Nation

MovieDramaHistory

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

The Battle at Elderbush Gulch

The Battle at Elderbush Gulch · 1913

The Battle at Elderbush Gulch

MovieActionWestern

Two young girls are sent away to live with their uncle, which sets off a chain of events resulting in an Indian attack on the town.

Hoodoo Ann

Hoodoo Ann · 1916

MovieRomanceComedy

A teenage orphan (who believes herself to be "hoodooed") is taken in by a childless couple and quickly falls for the boy next door; Her luck seems to have changed. But the idyll is broken up after a trip to the movies-- It seems the 'hoodoo' has returned after she tries to replicate what she'd seen on the screen.

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln · 1930

Abraham Lincoln

MovieHistoryDrama

A biopic dramatizing Abraham Lincoln's life through a series of vignettes depicting its defining chapters: his romance with Ann Rutledge; his early years as a country lawyer; his marriage to Mary Todd; his debates with Stephen A. Douglas; the election of 1860; his presidency during the Civil War; and his assassination in Ford’s Theater in 1865.

1776, or The Hessian Renegades

1776, or The Hessian Renegades · 1909

1776, or The Hessian Renegades

MovieHistoryWar

During the American Revolution, a young soldier carrying a crucial message to General Washington is spotted and pursued by a group of enemy soldiers. He takes refuge with a civilian family, but is soon detected. The family and their neighbors must then make plans to see that the important message gets through after all.

To Save Her Soul

To Save Her Soul · 1909

To Save Her Soul

Agnes, a singer in a country church, is practicing one day when a vaudeville manager hears her and offers her a job. Over the objections of the curate who loves her, she accepts the offer and goes to the city. Later the curate goes to hear Agnes perform and, fearing that her soul is being corrupted by show business, he asks her to return to the small town with him. When she refuses, he is prepared to kill her in order to protect the purity of her soul. This brings about her change of heart, and together they return to the little church.

They Would Elope

They Would Elope · 1909

They Would Elope

Two lovers elope and expect to be pursued by her father. But the clever father has tricked them into running off, and celebrates their wedding when they return home.

More Like This

Our Little Sister

Our Little Sister · 2015

Our Little Sister

After the death of their estranged father, 3 adult sisters invite their teenaged half-sister to live with them.

Franz Kafka's a Country Doctor

Franz Kafka's a Country Doctor · 2007

Franz Kafka's a Country Doctor

MovieAnimationDrama

A hapless country doctor describes with breathless urgency a night-time summons to attend a young patient. Events soon take on a surreal aspect as "unearthly horses" transport him instantaneously to the bedside. The doctor, preoccupied with personal distractions and grievances against those he is employed to care for, fails to find what is revealed to be a vile, fatal wound. He is humiliated by the villagers, who are "always expecting the impossible from the doctor," and doomed to an endless return trip, losing everything.

TRON: The Next Day

TRON: The Next Day · 2011

TRON: The Next Day

MovieScience FictionThriller

TRON: The Next Day is a 10-minute short film, released on the Blu-ray edition of TRON: Legacy in April 2011, that fills in the backstory between TRON and TRON: Legacy. It features scenes from the real-world Flynn Lives ARG as well as purely in-universe content. The short film also reveals the full chronology of the Flynn Lives Organization, naming Roy Kleinberg as the secret figure heading up the operation and Alan Bradley as its financial backer. Some scenes in the short also set up the story for a potential third film.

Other Worlds

Other Worlds · 1999

MovieAnimationRomance

A man and a woman, talking over their relationship.

In Darkness

In Darkness · 2011

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied city of Lviv. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lviv (formerly Poland).

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter