The Scarlet Letter

Victor Sjöström's luminous adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, starring Lillian Gish in one of her most nuanced performances. In Puritan Boston, the gentle seamstress Hester Prynne and the kindly Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale share a secret love that, when discovered, brands Hester with the scarlet letter "A" and sets both their lives on a collision course with the colony's merciless moral order. Sjöström brings his Scandinavian sensibility to American material, finding both the human warmth and the cruel rigidity in the Puritan world, while Gish — who personally chose Sjöström to direct — gives a performance of extraordinary emotional depth. The chemistry between the doomed lovers is palpable, and Sjöström's restraint makes the moments of passion and suffering all the more powerful.