The Scarlet Letter (1926 film)
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1850 novel
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
| The Scarlet Letter | |
|---|---|
 Lobby card | |
| Directed by | Victor Seastrom |
| Written by | Frances Marion |
| Based on | The Scarlet Letter 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Produced by | Victor Seastrom |
| Starring | Lillian Gish Lars Hanson |
| Cinematography | Hendrik Sartov |
| Edited by | Hugh Wynn |
| Music by | William Axt (uncredited) David Mendoza (uncredited) |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
|
Running time | 115 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent with English intertitles |
The Scarlet Letter is a 1926 American silent drama film based on the 1850 novel of the same name by Nathaniel Hawthorne and directed by Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjöström (credited as Victor Seastrom).[1] Prints of the film survive in the MGM/United Artists film archives and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.[2] The film is now considered the best film adaptation of Hawthorne's novel.[3]
- Lillian Gish as Hester Prynne
- Lars Hanson as The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale
- Henry B. Walthall as Roger Chillingworth (credited as playing Roger Prynne)
- Karl Dane as Master Giles
- William H. Tooker as The Governor
- Marcelle Corday as Mistress Hibbins
- Fred Herzog as The Jailer
- Jules Cowles as The Beadle
- Mary Hawes as Patience
- Joyce Coad as Pearl
- James A. Marcus as A Sea Captain
- Nora Cecil as Townswoman (uncredited)
- Iron Eyes Cody as Young Native American at Dunking (uncredited)
- Dorothy Gray as Child (uncredited)
- Margaret Mann as Townswoman (uncredited)
- Polly Moran as Jeering Townswoman (uncredited)
- Chief Yowlachie as Native American (uncredited)
- May Boley as Jeering Townswoman (uncredited)
Production
“Early in the film Gish, as Prynne, loses her bonnet chasing a songbird through a summer glade. When the wind catches her waist-long tresses, Gish appears for an instant as if she had stepped into a painting by Botticelli...Seastrom seizes on Gish's sensuality throughout the film...bringing this largely faithful adaptation down squarely on the side of love and ardent sensuality.”— Film critic Paul Malcolm[4]
The film was the second one Gish made under her contract with M-G-M and a departure from the ingénue roles she had performed in service to director D.W. Griffith. (Her first M-G-M picture was directed by King Vidor, an adaption of La bohème with co-star John Gilbert, in which she played the pathetic consumptive Mimi.)[5] She asked production manager Louis B. Mayer specifically to make The Scarlet Letter: his agreement was reluctant, due to M-G-M's concern that censors would object to a frank depiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne's character, Hester Prynne, whose romantic indiscretions unleash a wave of reactionary bigotry. Director Seastrom disabused these expectations with an opening intertitle "establishing Prynne's [Gish's] ordeal as 'a story of bigotry uncurbed.'"[6]
Shooting took under two months. The production cost a total of $417,000 when factoring out $48,000 overhead costs.[7]
Reception
The film made a profit of $296,000.[8]
Winner of the Photoplay Award for the Best Pictures of the Month (October 1926).[9]
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
- 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated[10]
- 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
- Hester Prynne – Nominated Hero[11]
