Victor Sjöström’s Hollywood Masterworks

A riot of sadomasochistic strangeness and warped self-abasement, this outré psychological shocker features a haunting performance from Lon Chaney—at once wrenchingly vulnerable and deeply frightening—as a brilliant scientist who, after he’s betrayed by both his wife and his benefactor, undergoes a twisted transformation into a circus clown who delights audiences by perversely reenacting his humiliation onstage. But behind the painted-on grin, a furious anger is brewing . . . Adapting Leonid Andreyev’s celebrated play, director Victor Sjöström makes the source material eminently cinematic, deploying delirious symbolist imagery to convey the torment of a shattered man.

A passion project for star (and uncredited producer) Lillian Gish, this starkly powerful film—written by trailblazing screenwriter Frances Marion—remains the definitive film adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel. A radiant Gish conveys both the untamed free spirit and defiant strength of Hester Prynne, who must withstand the devastating judgment of her strict Puritan village when she becomes pregnant by the town’s reverend (Lars Hanson). Contrasting the light-filled lyricism of the natural world with the austere shadows of the Puritan community, director Victor Sjöström vividly underscores the story’s central clash between free will and social repression.

For his towering final achievement of the silent era, director Victor Sjöström harnessed the full power of visual storytelling to unleash a maelstrom of psychosexual frenzy. Lillian Gish delivers her last and perhaps greatest silent performance as Letty, a young woman from Virginia who arrives in a desolate Texas town where she finds herself beset by lecherous men, jealous women, and a relentlessly howling desert wind that seems to carry an almost mythic portent. Reaching heights of expressionist horror in an unforgettable windstorm climax, Sjöström’s film conjures a fragile human world that is powerless against the unstoppable forces of nature.