Whispering Shadows

In the aftermath of the Great War, the idea that the dead would try to communicate with the living spiked in popularity, and WHISPERING SHADOWS concerns itself with this belief. Someone has stolen $100,000 from Charles A. Stevenson's company. Suspicion and his signature indicate that Robert Barrat has taken the money. Because his daughter, Lucy Cotton, loves the man, Stevenson tells him to leave the country -- he has already gotten his commission in the army. After Barrat has left, Stevenson satisfies himself that Philip Merrivale has forged Barrat's name in the records and taken the money. He forces the malefactor to write a written confession, then sticks it in a book .... and dies of a heart attack; his sister sticks the book back on the shelves. However, Miss Cotton becomes convinced that her father wants her to lock up the library. A year later, she gives Merrivale permission to search the library for Barrat's confession; he actually intends to find and destroy his own. However, when in a moment of absent-mindedness, Miss Cotton writes "Blind! Blind! Blind!" on a note to her aunt, she follows Merivale to the house to find.... she knows not what.

Miss Cotton is strikingly beautiful, but she would soon give up the movies to marry a succession of wealthy husbands, including a Romanof prince. Otherwise, the movie offers its story in a style reminiscent of classical French silent cinema. While in the hands of a master like Feuillade, the series of still camera placement frequently offered a startlingly subjective viewpoint, under the direction of Emile Chautard, there is no such effect. Instead, the story is driven by frequent title cards, without which most of the action would be meaningless.