ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1921)
Special Features: Silent with live musical accompaniment by Andrew Simpson
Having lost their parents to the plague and with the French Revolution raging throughout the country, provincial sisters Henriette (Lillian Gish) and Louise (Dorothy Gish) travel to Paris, seeking treatment for Louise's blindness. But the chaos and depravity of the city under siege separates them, with Henriette kidnapped by a lascivious marquis and Louise forced into a gang of thieves who force her to beg on the street. As the French Revolution rages around them, the sisters must navigate perils on both sides of the conflict, helped by sympathetic Chevalier Joseph Schildkraut (in his American screen debut) and people's hero Danton (Monte Blue) himself. "A marvelous, expensively produced mixture of melodrama and sentimentality, with duels, kidnappings, the storming of the Bastille and Lillian Gish being saved from the guillotine." – Pauline Kael. DIR/SCR/PROD D.W. Griffith, from the play "Les Deux Orphelines" by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Cormon. U.S., 1921, b&w, 150 min. NOT RATED
No AFI Member passes accepted.
35mm print
Run Time: 150 Minutes
Opening Date: Sunday, March 31, 2019
Genre: Historical drama
