The White Sister

Angela Chiaromonte is the daughter of a wealthy Italian prince killed in a fall from his horse. Half the estate should come to her, but her older half sister burns the will and takes everything, leaving Angela in poverty. Angela is engaged to Captain Giovanni Severi, who is then taken prisoner during an expedition in Africa. Believing him dead, she gives her life over to his memory and becomes a nun. Severi, however, has escaped and is on his way back to Italy. The knot of the story is undone in a scene during an eruption of Vesuvius. The film puts the weight of a promise made and a vow taken at its centre, and tells of a woman caught between two bindings. Lillian Gish and Ronald Colman appear in Henry King’s hundred and thirty five minute American silent film, completed in 1923.