The headline on this piece wasn't written by me. It is from an enthusiastic review of this film from a newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. It's the Madison Capital Times, December 08, 1919, Pg. 8. I found the review fascinating. It gives us a better perspective on the takeaway that many audience members had at the time. The Great War, the War to End All Wars, was over. While modern audiences focus on the powerful scene of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller at the water pump or Annie translating what was being taught in Helen's college classes, many in 1919 were energized by this film's focus on peace.
What follows are not my words. This is the review that ran in that Madison paper more than 100 years ago.
"HELEN KELLER, born deaf, dumb and blind, SEES; it is the world that is BLIND.
"That is the thought that comes after seeing Helen Keller in the powerful motion picture "Deliverance" which opened a week's engagement at the Fuller last night. The production portrays the life of this wonderful woman,-a woman who has mastered language and science; a woman who, though blind and deaf, sees the coming of the new day of brotherhood of love and world democracy.
"How refreshing it is to witness such a picture as "Deliverance" after having seen so much of the tainted and bought and tawdry propaganda that flits across the screen these, days. It isn't the kind of a picture that the Duponts, war profit kings just arrived in the field of commercialized picturedom, would send out into the land. It is an HONEST picture, carrying honest gospel.
"Only those who are blind who do not see the TRUTH."
"That is one of the things that "Deliverance" has Helen' Keller saying.
"Helen Keller, though born with seemingly impenetrable walls of darkness about her, has broken down all barriers and today she sees the light of a NEW DAY while millions in the world are groping along in the dingy and musty lanes of the old order.
"Though deaf and blind, Miss Keller plainly sees the futility of war as an instrument for the settlement of disputes between men and nations. Though deaf and blind, Miss Keller has the vision which points to the brotherhood of man as the substitute for the bayonet and the machine gun. Though deaf and blind, Miss Keller sees the coming of a new industrial democracy where the man who produced will retain a larger share of the products of his toil; where the strong will not oppress the weak; where organized wealth will not exploit the disorganized poor.
"In fact, Helen Keller sees so much these days that those who are BLIND are calling her a RADICAL. Those who are BLIND to the new order that is coming over the world proclaim Helen Keller's vision as an evidence of Bolshevism and Socialism.
"Think of it! Millions who are BLIND showing their pity for Helen Keller who SEES.
"And isn't the struggle that Helen Keller has waged to emancipate herself from darkness the same struggle that all men women with VISION have to wage? Are not men struggling in darkness today, fighting for millions groping in darkness, encouraged because they have the vision to see the light on the peaks beyond?
"Are not the great figures of history men who, like Helen Keller, have broken down the dark walls of the past and have seen the light of the new day ahead?
"We wish every man, woman and child in Madison could go to the Fuller this week to witness this production. Take a day away from the grimaces and caprices of Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and let Helen Keller make you see-SEE for one night.
"Helen Keller has consecrated her life to the great task of making a BLIND world SEE.
"Only those that are blind who do not see the truth" says Helen Keller.
"And much of the world is BLIND to the TRUTH in these days."
