Orphans of the Storm

Two foster sisters arrive in Paris before the French Revolution. Louise, who is blind, is lost in the crowd and forced to beg; Henriette falls into the hands of an aristocrat. When the revolution breaks out both are pulled into the machinery of the new order, and the finale plays at the foot of the guillotine. D.W. Griffith directed. The sisters are played by Lillian and Dorothy Gish, sisters in life as well. It was Griffith's last large-scale production. Paris streets were rebuilt near New York and the crowd scenes used hundreds of extras; the cost strained his own studio. Its politics are not hidden. Griffith's intertitles compare the revolution to the Bolshevik movement of his own day and issue a plain warning against extremism, using a historical story to speak to 1921. The rescue sequence at the end is treated as a textbook case of how suspense is constructed through editing. Who it is for: viewers curious about silent film and early epic storytelling. Who it is not for: anyone put off by the level of melodrama; the acting belongs to the heightened language of its time.