Orphans of the storm 1922

ORPHANS OF THE STORM / ZWEI WAISEN IM STURM

David Wark Griffith. USA 1922. - b/w

Release Date: 28.12.1921 (17.8.1963 ARD, German TV)
Distributor: United Artists
Production Company: Griffith Prod.
Production Director: D. W: Griffith
Presented by: David Wark Griffith

Screenplay: Gaston de Tolignac

Based on: Adolphe Philippe Dennery and Eugène Cormon, The Two Orphans (adapted by N. Hart Jackson and Albert Marshman Palmer; New York, 1874)
Additional material for this film was apparently drawn from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution.

Photography: Hendrik Sartov, Paul Allen, G.W. Bitzer
Film Editing: James Smith, Rose Smith
Art Director: Charles M. Kirk
Set Design: Edward Scholl
Music arranged by: Louis F. Gottschalk, William Frederick Peters
Technical Director: Frank Wortman
Scenario: Marquis de Trolignac

Cast:
Lillian Gish (Heriette Girard)
Dorothy Gish (Louise)
Joseph Schildkraut (Chevalier de Vaudrey)
Frank Losee (Count de Linères)
Katherine Emmett (Countress de Linières)
Morgan Wallace (Marquis de Praille)
Lucille La Verne (Mutter Frochard)
Sheldon Lewis (Jacques Frochard)
Frank Puglia (Pierre Frochard)
Creighton Hale (Picard)
Leslie King (Jacques-Forget-Not)
Monte Blue (Danton)
Sidney Herbert (Robespierre)
Lee Kohlmar (King Lous XVI)
Adolphe Lestina (doctor)
Kate Bruce (Sister Geneviève)
Flora Finch (starving peasant)
Louis Wolheim (executioner)
Kenny Delmar (The Chevalier, as a boy)
Herbert Sutch (meat-carver at fête)
James Smith, Rose Smith (dancers)

Notice:

Louise is taken to Paris by her adopted sister, Henriette, to cure her blindness. Henriette is abducted by a marquis but is rescued by another aristocrat. Louise falls into the clutches of a beggar woman; Henriette and her lover are sentenced to the guillotine, but fortunaltely Danton comes to their rescue.

(Source: The American Film Institue Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Feature Films 1921-1930, New York, London: R. R. Bowker Company, 1971)

Kostümstück zur Zeit der Französischen Revolution: Das Schicksal zweier Waisen, deren eine von Danton im letzten Augenblick vor der Guillotine gerettet wird. Nicht gerade der beste der (Stumm-)Filme des durch Birth of a Nation und Intolerance bekanntgewordenen Regisseurs, sondern ein grotesker antirevolutionärer Karneval (Sadoul).