Silence

We open on lawyer Jack Mulhall trying to convince H. B. Warner to speak out to save his life. Warner is about to be hanged, and his only chance is to break his silence and let his confederates go hang. But Warner remains obdurately silent. We then go into a long flashback, more than 20 years earlier, in which Warner , escaped from prison, convinces his paramour, Vera Reynolds, to bring their daughter and flee the country. But maters intervene, and this never happens. Instead, she marries Rockcliffe Fellowes, who raises the daughter his own. Miss Reynolds dies, but is reborn to play her own daughter, who is about to marry Jack Mulhall.

I had the pleasure of looking at the lovely restored copy that played in San Francisco in 2017, with the fine score by the Monte Alto Picture Orchestra. The opening and closing sequences are interestingly shot, with a strong expressionist camera and good cutting speed. The cast is excellent, with Warner, as always, a strong and interesting performer, and a shout-out should be offered to Raymond Hatton as the slimy Harry Silvers as we follow the whys and wherefores of the melodramatic story. I found the tacked-on happy ending a bit annoying, but that's the wont of film making in the era; it was a truism that the audiences wanted that. Still, remove that, and you have a very satisfying tragedy.

Though the restored version made from the only surviving copy, from the Cinémathèque Française, happens to be a little shorter than the original US release, what's left is still wonderful.

H. B. Warner gives a vivid performance as the escaped convict that lost both his wife and child, married and brought up by a rich and respectable man. The plot sometimes remind some parts of Benjamin Christensen's Blind Justice (Hævnens Nat, 1916). One can feel his despair all through the movie and the emotions that Warner is able to pass on to the audience are powerful.

Vera Reynolds, who plays both the mother and her child, is a great and trully beautiful actress. The precision of her acting, whether she is playing the mother (tough woman that faces the police on the tracks of the man she loves) or her girl (lovely and slightly naive rich girl that grew up protected from the outside world), distinguishes both characters without difficulty.

Visually, the photography is impeccable. As soon as the very first scene, the film is full of visual ideas, with even visual "sound" evocations, if I may say so (the restauration choose to create these sound effects, which I personally found that it worked well.) The jail scenes even have some expressionist overtones.

In one word, I highly recommend it!

Whilst in exile from Famous Players Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille set up the DeMille Pictures Corporation to produce his own films, as well as to facilitate the films of his brother, William C. DeMille. Cecil acted as a presenter on this film.