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Sjöström (as Seastrom), MGM, 1927, from Hawthorne, script by Frances Marion. Lillian Gish is Hester Prynne in Puritan Boston; the A is sewn on; Arthur Dimmesdale (Lars Hanson) is the minister who will not speak. AFI Catalog lists it as a Metro feature built around Gish's contract. Sjöström keeps the forest and the scaffold, not the sermon. Hanson, from the Swedish pictures, plays the hidden half. The child is the fact neither adult can put down.
In three programmes
The tradition crosses the water. Sjöström at MGM, Gish as Hester, Hanson as the minister who will not speak, and the Puritan town standing in for weather. Watch the scaffold scenes: a community as a climate you cannot get out of.
Wanting with a letter sewn on it. Gish's Hester will not pretend, and Hanson's minister will not speak. Sjöström keeps the forest and the scaffold. Watch who pays: she does, in public, and he does, in private, which the film thinks is worse.
Hester refusing to perform shame. The A is sewn on, the minister will not speak, and Gish chose Sjöström herself. Watch the scaffold. She stands with the child and does not lower her eyes. The community is the weather here, and she is the one thing in it that does not bend.
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