Die weiße Schwester

Exciting story of two lovers of war torn Italy. Lillian Gish plays the daughter of a Prince whose sister hates her. Ronald Colman plays an army officer whose brother is a Professer determined to discover the secret of the volcano the town rests upon. When Lillian's father is killed when he falls off his horse her sister inherits everything, banishing Lillian from the palace. Ronald goes on an expedition to Africa only after Lillian promises to marry him when he return and is supposedly killed. This movie starts off a bit slow but then picks up rapidly. An excellent movie which I'd highly recommend to all silent movie buffs or Lillian Gish and Ronald Colman fans.

The video version now available is a totally inadequate representation of a beautiful film, with gorgeous photography. Furthermore, it is severely cut, missing important scenes that show Lillian Gish at her most inventive. Hopefully, someone will come up with a better source for a future release.

The 1920s were the golden age of the screen melodrama. As motion pictures became ever more elaborate in their expression and ever more legitimate as part of culture, so they became less of a picture show and took their cues more from stage and literature. The White Sister is a typical example. Derived from a book by F. Marion Crawford, like so many novels from the previous hundred years, it tells a tale of romantic love versus social convention, with fate, or rather bad luck, playing a hand. Crawford is all but forgotten today, but in 1923 he was still remembered as a popular author of the previous generation, and regarded worthy of this rather extravagant production.

The White Sister was directed by Henry King, another name not so familiar now, but a high profile one in Hollywood throughout his career. King was a firm believer in physical space as a psychological factor – a bit like Fritz Lang but not nearly as abstract. The large sets provide him with a lot of material, and he really allows them to dominate, emphasising both their height and depth, in the early scenes showing the disinherited Lillian Gish dwarfed within them. But he knows to keep focus on the characters by placing us inside the action, for example with the point-of-view shots of the musicians when Gish and Ronald Colman sit together on the wall. He is also able to move right in on a personal level, such as his memorable introduction to Gish, a face peeping through a barred window. Throughout the picture he is juxtaposing the big canvas with the little. For example, when Gish's carriage rides away after her goodbye to Colman, we get a close-up of her pulling down the blind, followed by the carriage receding away down a lonely looking street – the emptiness of the latter image complements the emotional moment of the former.

As for Miss Gish, this were first picture since parting ways with her mentor D.W. Griffith. Her recent performances for that great director had not been impressive. For one thing she had too often been cast as a teenager and encouraged to put on a twee girly act. Secondly in pictures like Broken Blossoms and Orphans of the Storm she had been unbearably hammy, throwing wild gestures and pulling faces in every scene. The White Sister finds her refreshingly understated, just as she was in her earliest Griffith pictures. In scenes such as the one where she meets Colman after being turfed out of her home, or the moment she takes her vows, her face is passive, her emotions stifled, but clearly burning below the surface. Of course, when she is lead to believe that her love has been killed her reaction is extreme, but this is natural given the context, and compared to the subtlety of the rest of her performance it has all the necessary impact. In some of her later Griffith movies Gish would have reacted like that if she heard the next-door neighbour had a cough.

Ultimately however The White Sister bears the traits of a movie industry seeking to become more literate and prestigious, in that its title cards are too long and too many. At 143 minutes this is not a short picture, and a lot of that runtime is accounted for by wordage that would be better left out. After all, King's images are so meaningful, and Gish's performance is so intelligent, there is no need to break them up with a lot of text. We even get a title pointing out that the portrait of Gish as a nun by her lovelorn admirer shows her as an unattainable ideal, forcing the symbolism upon the audience rather than allowing them to interpret it for themselves. Incidentally Henry King was also the producer, and while not actually responsible for writing the titles he certainly would have had final say over what was included, so perhaps to some extent he lacked confidence in his own ability to tell a story visually. Whatever the case, it makes what could be one of the more sophisticated melodramas of its era just a bit more boring than it ought to be.

This second version of The White Sister, an earlier silent was done in 1915 was the first project of the Gish sisters after they had left the paternal care of D.W. Griffith. Lillian Gish spared no expense in this very long silent film, 123 minutes was quite a demand on the audience's attention. She and director Henry King took the principal cast members to Italy to film on location, something rarely done back in that day.

Gish and King also personally selected their leading man in Ronald Colman who had appeared in several British silents and one American feature before The White Sister. According to the Citadel Film series book, The Films of Ronald Colman, Gish and King saw him on the stage.

Now Ronald Colman had one of the greatest speaking voices in the English language, something we know since the advent of talkies and Colman's sound debut in Bulldog Drummond. But what attracted Gish and King to him was the swarthiness of his complexion, they thought he would pass convincingly for an Italian on the silent screen.

He and Gish made a fine screen team. The story today is rather old fashioned and Gish's saintliness is a bit much at times. Still the film does hold up well.

Gish is the younger half sister of Gail Kane and both are the daughters of Italian duke Charles Lane. When Lane is killed during a hunting accident, Kane quickly finds her father's will and burns it, effectively disinheriting Gish who was they used to say, born on the wrong side of the blanket.

Gish's Catholic faith sees her through the crisis and also the love of young officer Ronald Colman who originally was Kane's guy. Later on he's chosen to head a military mission to North Africa in what is now Libya. This was in the colonial expansionist period in the 19th century in a newly united Italy. But he's reported killed and Gish in her grief surrenders herself to her religion and becomes a nun.

That's as far as I'll go, the ending is not typical of Hollywood normally would give its audience. Still the loose ends of the plot are neatly tied together.

I'm surprised Gail Kane did not come out of this film with a bigger reputation. Her portrayal what might be called the Black Sister is really quite good.

The location cinematography in Italy is first rate and the special effects with Versuvius erupting and a dam bursting for its time are also nicely done. The White Sister is worth a look, I think it's better than the 1933 sound version with Clark Gable and Helen Hayes.

Assisted by luminous photography and Henry King's sympathetic direction, Lillian Gish delivers a most compelling performance in this lavish production, filmed entirely in Italy. True, she has excellent support from subdued yet charming Ronald Colman, chillingly malevolent Gail Kane, J. Barney Sherry and others, but it's Miss Gish's movie and she makes the most of it.

Camera-wise, King's direction is very static, but nonetheless engaging. He not only has an eye for the pictorial values of his sets and locations, but adroitly maintains audience interest at a high level through the various predictable turns of the plot, although the long-awaited climax proves somewhat disappointing and lacks spectacle.