Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Whispering Chorus (1918)

Artcraft Pictures
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Image Entertainment)

A lower middle class working man and husband can't afford to buy his wife a new dress. He steals cash at work and alters the books to cover it up, then blows it in a card game. Unable to face his wife, he runs away to a shack in the woods. One day he drags a body out of the nearby water, disfigures the face and writes a note that implies he was the victim of a homicide. He assumes a new identity and gets work as a manual laborer. He gets in an accident and is crippled for life. Meanwhile, his wife, thinking him dead, gets remarried, but his elderly mother still has faith he is alive. Years pass, and he returns, barely recognizable, to his mother. However, he gets arrested and is put on trial for murdering himself, of which he is convicted! His wife finally recognizes him on death row, but rather than destroy her happiness he allows himself to be put to death. Raymond Hatton is good in the lead role as the guilt-stricken man, although the complex plot stretches believability a little thin.

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