Orphans of the Storm

In this film, Henriette brings her blind sister Louise to Paris, in search of a surgeon who might be able to restore her sister’s sight. Henriette is kidnapped by a lascivious nobleman, leaving Louise to wander helplessly about until she too is “stolen” by a family of beggars., An epic silent drama directed by the seminal American filmmaker DW Griffiths, who also created the landmark features Intolerance and Birth of a Nation. Lillian and Dorothy Gish star as two orphan sisters, Henriette and Louise Girard, who make their way to Paris in search of a cure for Louise’s sudden blindness. But the French capital is a dangerous place for two naive young women, and Henriette is soon abducted by the villainous Marquis de Praille, who abandons Louise to fend for herself on the Parisian streets. Rescue for Henriette comes in the form of the Chevalier de Vaudrey but, as this is the late 1780s, it’s a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire of the bloody, anti-aristocratic violence of the French Revolution. Can Henriette and her upper crust saviour survive the guillotine, and what is to become of Louise? The film was made on a 14-acre lot north of New York and features Griffiths’ trademark attention to detail and vast set-pieces, including the storming of the Bastille, as well as a typically luminous performance from Lillian Gish. Aside from its theme of romantic adventure, the movie – one of the director’s last successes – was a thinly veiled warning against the perils of class tensions; the turbulence of the Russian Revolution had taken place just three years earlier., Two waifs are caught up in the French Revolution. Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Monte Blue. Countess de Linieres: Katherine Emmett. Count de Linieres: Frank Losee. Jacques: Morgan Wallace. Mother Frochard: Lucille La Verne. Robespierre: Sidney Herbert. Pierre: Sheldon Lewis. D.W. Griffith directed.