Hearts of the World

Hearts of the World is a 1918 silent film directed by D. W. Griffith. On 31 August 1918, Anne Blythe and her youngest daughter Rilla went to Charlottetown and watched it.

Anne and Rilla's viewing

Rilla recounts watching the film in her diary:

Mother and I went into Charlottetown yesterday to see the moving picture, Hearts of the World. I made an awful goose of myself--father will never stop teasing me about it for the rest of my life. But it all seemed so horribly real--and I was so intensely interested that I forgot everything but the scenes I saw enacted before my eyes. And then, quite near the last came a terribly exciting one. The heroine was struggling with a horrible German soldier who was trying to drag her away. I knew she had a knife--I had seen her hide it, to have it in readiness--and I couldn't understand why she didn't produce it and finish the brute. I thought she must have forgotten it, and just at the tensest moment of the scene I lost my head altogether. I just stood right up on my feet in that crowded house and shrieked at the top of my voice--"The knife is in your stocking--the knife is in your stocking!"

I created a sensation!

The funny part was, that just as I said it, the girl did snatch out the knife and stab the soldier with it!

Everybody in the house laughed. I came to my senses and fell back in my seat, overcome with mortification. Mother was shaking with laughter. I could have shaken her. Why hadn't she pulled me down and choked me before I had made such an idiot of myself. She protests that there wasn't time.

Fortunately the house was dark, and I don't believe there was anybody there who knew me. And I thought I was becoming sensible and self-controlled and womanly! It is plain I have some distance to go yet before I attain that devoutly desired consummation.