The Broken Silence

The Broken Silence (1922) is another of the Pine Tree Pictures productions filmed in Maine 1921-23. Based on a story by James Oliver Curwood and directed by Dell Henderson, it's a complicated plot about murder and revenge in the Canadian wilderness.

Zena Keefe stars as Jeanne Marat, a young woman living with her husband (Jack Hopkins) in a remote and wintry Canadian location. A local Mounty (Robert Elliott) has a crush on her. She's visited daily by an old priest and an old Cree Indian named Joe who's always snooping around. At the local Mounty base, the Inspector (J. Barney Sherry) calls for the priest to confess an old crime he committed and in flashback we get the story.

Twenty-five years before he lusted after a woman (Gypsy O'Brien) who was married and had two kids. In a blind rage of jealousy he kills her husband so she can be free to marry him but she commits suicide instead. After he tells the story to the priest he's shot dead and someone sees Keefe running away.

When confronted, Hopkins claims he did the shooting, but Keefe claims she did it. Then the truth comes out that they are mot married ... they are brother and sister and that Indian Joe has been watching over them all these years and that the Inspector was indeed the man responsible for their parents' deaths.

A review in the Portland Evening Express recalls that a sequence was filmed during the "famous freak blizzard of April 1" and that the film captures its "awe-inspiring fury."

The story is too much for a 52-minute film. I suspect there may be some missing bits. Zena Keefe is an attractive leading lady.