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The Scarlet Letter

Only Lillian Gish, the ordained "First Lady Of The Silent Screen," could have pushed such a morally challenging script 2SCARLETScarlet The Letter MGM 1927 (4)past the rigid censor board of the American film industry in the Twenties! Gish plays the time-honored role of Hester Prynne, a woman shunned by her puritanical township after a romantic dalliance (and subsequent childbirth) with the village minister. Gish's stamp of approval was enough to send this adaptation of Nathanial Hawthorne's literary classic quickly into a production helmed by prominent Swedish director Victor Sjöström, whose seasoned visual mastery gives the film's rural American locales a richly detailed sheen. As well, the performances by Gish and co-star Lars Hanson are electric, yielding one of the most emotionally tempestuous films of the era. It's a total lovelorn barnburner culminating in an on-screen embrace so romantically charged, so utterly cathartic that it's bound to set your heart on fire.

USA, 1926, 115 min., Restored 35mm print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive / Director: Victor Sjöström Writer : Frances Marion, based on the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne / Starring Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Henry B. Walthall