Home, Sweet Home

Four episodes in the lives of those for whom the old song "Home Sweet Home" acquired a special meaning, beginning with the song's composer John Howard Payne. This was the first film in which Griffith told several stories related by a common theme. Here, however, they are told in series, whereas in Intolerance they ran parallel. The prologue shows how Payne wrote the song in France while desperately homesick; the remaining three stories tell dramatic events in the lives of others who were affected by the song, and in the epilogue we see Payne once more, suffering in Purgatory, but reunited finally in Heaven with his mother and his abandoned sweetheart when his repentance brings forgiveness.