The Whispering Chorus

Raymond Hatton is "John Tremble - 2nd Assistant Cashier of the Clumley Contracting Company." He hears voices from the Hall of Echoes. Kathlyn Williams is "Jane Tremble - his wife." Eventually, she will hear voices of her own. Elliott Dexter is "'Fighting' George Coggeswell - A far-seeing young legislator who heads a commission with extraordinary powers to investigate the muddy waters of the state's politics." He tilts the scale of justice with pipe ashes.

Mr. Hatton is stuck in a $25 a week dead end job, with no hope for the future; living with his mother (Edythe Chapman) he is unable to even buy a cheap little dress for Ms. Williams, for Christmas. To make ends meet, Mr. Hatton embezzles $10.000 from his company. Plagued by guilt (and an investigation), Hatton drops out of sight, for a couple of days. Whilst fishing, he reels in a dead man, and decides to exchange identity with the deceased Edgar Smith. He becomes Smith, and very unwisely (as it turns out) frames him for both the Tremble embezzlement, and the murder of Tremble - so that he may achieve martyrdom. Then, he becomes a fugitive…

This is an epic psychological drama; always interesting, it slowly becomes more and more unnerving, even horrific. The crescendo of images and plot build wildly, to an INTENSE ending. The film sometimes appears to be off-track, but winds up a tightly woven nightmare. There are SO MANY images to praise - but, just watch... Also, look for the cross-cutting as Hatton fishes for a dead body while Dexter fishes for Tremble - then, later, Tremble hooks up with a Chinatown prostitute while his wife marries Dexter.

Director Cecil B. DeMille and the production team are in peak condition. Hatton, remembered mainly as a "supporting" or "character" actor, performs supremely in the lead role; he effectively portrays the "slow acid of discontent steadily consuming" the soul of John Tremble. Williams shows some psychological problems of her own. Noah Berry has an important role as a longshoreman who guiltily houses Hatton, after unintentionally crippling him.

It's difficult to believe this film was released in 1918, and has received relatively little acclaim. It's a NOT TO BE MISSED silent classic.

********** The Whispering Chorus (3/28/18) Cecil B. DeMille ~ Raymond Hatton, Kathlyn Williams, Elliott Dexter, Noah Berry

The Whispering Chorus is one of a number of standout films in Cecil B. DeMille's 1910s output, and for some marks the end of an era in his work. It is also perhaps the darkest and most noir-ish story he ever dealt with.

Dark stories call for bleak imagery, and visuals are particularly stark here – plenty of barren sets or large areas of darkness. Furthermore with the psychological conflict going on DeMille makes heavy use of superimpositions. DeMille had always used these a lot to literalise products of his characters' imaginations, but here he goes a bit overboard and occasionally they are unnecessary. The eponymous whispering chorus (which is pretty much superfluous to the story anyway) is shown as a cloud of floating heads – not really necessary when the actors alone competently convey the anguish that their characters feel.

Although he is not really known for it, DeMille was probably the best director of actors during this period (as opposed to his sound films which tend to be wall-to-wall ham). It is not only that he seems to have encouraged a satisfactory blend of realism and dramatism, it was also his use of long, unbroken takes and intelligent framing of actors. In The Whispering Chorus his handling of more emotional scenes is particularly sensitive, cutting to close-ups at key moments to highlight an actor's face. DeMille also tends to keep the sets Spartan and uncluttered for a poignant scene, allowing the audience to concentrate solely on the performers.

Let's take a closer look at the lead actor. The first thing that strikes you about Raymond Hatton is what a thin face he has, and how he seems to have a permanent disappointed expression. But look beyond that, and you can see he is actually a pretty good actor – certainly better than his co-star Kathlyn Williams. Hatton is one of a number of silent stars who drifted out of the spotlight only to turn up absolutely everywhere as a character actor in the sound era – he is quite memorable as the "murderous impulses" barber in Fritz Lang's Fury. He made dozens of appearances for DeMille, but The Whispering Chorus is his greatest moment, both in terms of the demands placed on him as an actor and the performance he turns in.

Some have labelled this as the last film in which DeMille kept his artistic integrity before giving way to commercialism. This is not really true, as pleasing the audience had always been top of his agenda, and his subsequent films do not differ a whole lot in style, although he would use superimpositions a lot less from here on, which is a good thing. It is true however that his next picture, Old Wives for New, marks the beginning of a series of rather lightweight marital comedies, after which his work would be full of the piety and sensationalism with which he is now associated.

Whatever the case, The Whispering Chorus stands as one of DeMille's greatest accomplishments. It does overuse those superimposed images, but this is really the only complaint. Underneath that is a strong and very grim drama. Noir-ish and dark, yes, but it has a poignant, bittersweet edge, hitting a lot of the same notes as George Stevens' A Place in The Sun.

Cecil B. DeMille himself described this early feature as one of the first 'psychological' films ever made, but it's actually a more-or-less typical late-Victorian Age cautionary fable, expressed (as might be expected) with a heavy dose of morality and melodrama. The story shows how a single moment of weakness (in this case the desperate embezzlement of $1,000 by a poverty-stricken bookkeeper) will ultimately lead to misfortune, and worse. Haunted by a guilty conscience, the long-suffering victim gambles away (in the following order) his savings, his self-respect, his family, and finally his own identity. Reduced at last to a penniless, crippled vagrant, he is finally arrested and, after a series of misunderstandings, charged with his own murder! Most of the heavy-handed exposition and delivery is hilarious when seen today, and the inadvertent humor kills the lingering impact of the film's often striking (for 1918) visual artistry.

It's interesting how demille studied the market and constantly sabotaged his own films for better sales when that wasn't really a thing back then between directors/producers. Im sure all the erotic,promiscuous, submission, branding and sacrifice scenes sold well back then and they would today. I'm not saying you cant have them but in demille's films they make no sense and are there simply to sell more tickets. I don't know why i liked his 1910s films cause having watched them again, they're incredibly stupid. Carmen would be better without carmen. So is male and female without the male female aspect. The squaw man and the virginian are boring and amateurish and it's a miracle they were received that well but its clear why they were.

Which brings us to the whispering chorus which is actually pretty good until the last 20-30min. Other than the characters that have no progression or change (john is the dumbass, and others are the kind good people all throughout), The story has some focus unlike his other films during the teens that jump between many different unrelated subjects (usually bold and controversial ones like miscegenation, heredity, sexual submission, racism, ... ) and the disjointed parts come together naturally. But like the rest, it goes downhill on a pathetic attempt to end on a high note and have the audience leave satisfied.

I knew the film would end with a "sacrifice" without even watching it. Why? Because all his 1910s films have a heroic sacrifice that's incredibly insanely stupid. His first film, the squaw man 1914, ends both parts of the story with a sacrifice. Male and female, old wives for new and .... have one too. The cheat 1915 ends with a double back to back sacrifice as if the asian guy was the villain here.

And in the whispering chorus, you guessed it, another super stupid sacrifice where john dies to save jane. Save jane from what?!!! Her hardships (if there'd be any) are nothing compared to his death. The dramatization of her supposed problems is idiotic. Each scene here is idiotic in context because they were made independent of one another without thinking about the overall film. And how are you gonna have a film called "the whispering chorus" that starts with a poem about it and not consider that maybe killing an innocent man would hunt her for the rest of her life!

I don't think a film is good/bad because i agree/disagree with its message or even not having any message. But when the morals are the focus of your films and you're incapable of conveying them because you had to add these scenes to sell more tickets, then the film is bad based on what it wanted to achieve.

This release marks the end of the recent silent Cecil B. DeMille double features for the time being and in many ways is the best of the lot thanks to the study in contrasts it provide. It features two films made back to back by DeMille in 1918. One is a moody psychological drama with expressionistic overtones while the other marks the beginning of a series of films which would explore the changes in society brought about by World War I.

OLD WIVES FOR NEW takes a look at postwar mores and suggests that the status quo is no longer so. As the title implies this is a film about divorce and divorce as a solution to marital problems, a then unheard of idea which clearly sets the stage for what took place during the 1920's regarding public morality. Basically a domestic drama with moments of comedy, WIVES charts the course of six characters whose interactions propel the story along while making shrewd observations that are still with us today. The scene where the lead character remembers his wife as she once was is both poignant and honest in its emotions. The cast is uniformly fine with Theodore Roberts a standout as the philandering business partner who comes to a bad end.

Just before WIVES DeMille released his most startling and revolutionary film THE WHISPERING CHORUS which shows him following D. W. Griffith's lead in trying to expand the boundaries of contemporary cinema. The story of a poor bookkeeper who embezzles funds to provide for his wife only to fake his death to avoid detection sets the stage for the cruel twist of fate that resolves the film. Along the way DeMille uses a number of stylistic tricks to enhance the downbeat elements most notably the use of multiple exposures to signify "the whispering chorus", those voices we all have inside our heads that tell us what and what not to do. Raymond Hatton is marvelous as the lowly clerk who undergoes a number of transformations before facing up to the aforementioned cruel twist of fate that brings the movie to a stunning conclusion. It's a pity that he was primarily used in supporting roles throughout his career.

CHORUS is my favorite among the early DeMille titles currently available. Although this transfer looks really good for the most part, the color tints are oversaturated in some places but that can be corrected by adjusting the color intensity on your set downward. WIVES looks better overall as it has only a few wear and tear problems at the very beginning. As a silent film enthusiast if you were to get only one of the DeMille twin bills then this is the one. It shows him at the top of his game as a silent film director and shows the direction that he was headed in, becoming the unofficial harbinger of public taste, something which rarely failed him over the rest of his remarkable career...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.