Tess of the Storm Country

The wealthy Elias Graves builds his house at the top of a hill. At the foot of that hill a community of squatters has settled. Many of the men there have their eye on young Tess. One of them, Ben Letts, frames her father for murder. Tess maintains her father’s innocence while having to keep hidden her feeling for the son of Graves. On top of that she is caring for the child born out of wedlock to Elias’s daughter. The film builds the difference of class through the distance between a hilltop and its foot. It is one of the works of American silent cinema in 1922 with Mary Pickford in the lead. Lloyd Hughes is also in the cast. John S. Robertson’s hundred and eighteen minute American film was completed in 1922.