The White Sister

Assisted by luminous photography and Henry King's sympathetic direction, Lillian Gish delivers a most compelling performance in this lavish production, filmed entirely in Italy. True, she has excellent support from subdued yet charming Ronald Colman, chillingly malevolent Gail Kane, J. Barney Sherry and others, but it's Miss Gish's movie and she makes the most of it.

Camera-wise, King's direction is very static, but nonetheless engaging. He not only has an eye for the pictorial values of his sets and locations, but adroitly maintains audience interest at a high level through the various predictable turns of the plot, although the long-awaited climax proves somewhat disappointing and lacks spectacle.

The White Sister (1923) : Brief Review -

A Great Tragic Romance on Catholism versus Eternal Love. The First Lady of America Cinema Lilian Gish had already done a lot of amazing work in Classics like 'Birth Of A Nation', 'Intolerance', 'Broken Blossoms' and 'Way Down East' and almost all the characters she played left people praising her like never before and never after. But even after so many memorable performances she still had a lot of talent left in her and The White Sister was one of those film where she showed it. I couldn't stop gushing over her cuteness even though i have already seen her in similar roles so many times. That's the magic and unearthy impact she had. The White Sister is tragic romantic drama away from the mainstream melodramatic love stories where the devotional ethics bids across the eternal love to put them in an unsolvable situation. A young woman becomes a nun when she believes her sweetheart has been killed, but things get complicated when he returns alive. Let's pay more attention to the writing of the film than other aspects because it was an unconventional approach to justify the tragedy and yet it simplifies things with the ease. Of course, most of the credit goes to the original novel for this mind-blowing thought of Catholism versus Love which might have turned controversial if not handled with correct sese. After that, it was all about Lilian Gish and her adorable cuteness which was nothing less than a treat. Ronald Colman was surprisingly good in his obsessive and passionate role. Director Henry King did a reasonable job pointing out every possible details within a short runtime, and the engaging factors were helmed very well too. Overall, a nice break from typical Tragic Romance which fulfills the general or should I say solid expectations.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest

Exciting story of two lovers of war torn Italy. Lillian Gish plays the daughter of a Prince whose sister hates her. Ronald Colman plays an army officer whose brother is a Professer determined to discover the secret of the volcano the town rests upon. When Lillian's father is killed when he falls off his horse her sister inherits everything, banishing Lillian from the palace. Ronald goes on an expedition to Africa only after Lillian promises to marry him when he return and is supposedly killed. This movie starts off a bit slow but then picks up rapidly. An excellent movie which I'd highly recommend to all silent movie buffs or Lillian Gish and Ronald Colman fans.

In Italy, the Lordly volcano Vesuvius "waves his plume of peace to a smiling city in the valley". Of course, the volcano is, in actuality, "a seething ferment of unrest." The city is equally dominated by the wealthy Chiaromonte family, who live in a monstrous palace. Among them are half-sisters Lillian Gish (as Angela) and Gail Kane (as Marchesa). Ms. Gish is in love with young Ronald Colman (as Govanni Severini); and, they plan to marry. The sisters' father Charles Lane (as Prince Chiaromonte), when not focusing on his devotionals, likes to ride horses; unfortunately, he falls off his horse, and dies.

Wicked sister Kane destroys the Prince's will; and, in the eyes of The Law and The Church, inherits everything. Bad becomes worse when the Catholic church refuses to recognize the deceased Prince's second marriage, which produced Gish; so the wedding with Colman becomes a not-so-blessed event. Finally, Kane throws Gish out of the palace. Later, poverty-stricken Gish is reunited with her beloved Captain Colman. They plan to wed when he returns from a mission to Africa; but, he is reportedly killed, fighting Arab bandits. Then, Gish becomes a nun. When her more earthly intended turns up alive, Gish must choose between her spiritual husband, Jesus Christ, and the physical Ronald Colman…

Way too long, and directorially unfocused, Henry King's "The White Sister" does not reach its lofty expectations. There are, however, some extraordinarily beautiful scenes; and, the lead performances are excellent. The film seems relatively "reverential", considering the subject matter; though, Colman rails against, "The tyranny of the church - enslaving women who should be wives and mothers!" Undoubtedly, Gish and King were familiar with the original portrayal of "The White Sister", by Viola Allen, on stage (1909) and screen (1915), and sought to bring the story to more "epic" proportions. It appears as if water replaced the more difficult to film lava, for the less-than-climatic finish.

******* The White Sister (9/5/23) Henry King ~ Lillian Gish, Ronald Colman, Gail Kane, J. Barney Sherry

The 1920s were the golden age of the screen melodrama. As motion pictures became ever more elaborate in their expression and ever more legitimate as part of culture, so they became less of a picture show and took their cues more from stage and literature. The White Sister is a typical example. Derived from a book by F. Marion Crawford, like so many novels from the previous hundred years, it tells a tale of romantic love versus social convention, with fate, or rather bad luck, playing a hand. Crawford is all but forgotten today, but in 1923 he was still remembered as a popular author of the previous generation, and regarded worthy of this rather extravagant production.

The White Sister was directed by Henry King, another name not so familiar now, but a high profile one in Hollywood throughout his career. King was a firm believer in physical space as a psychological factor – a bit like Fritz Lang but not nearly as abstract. The large sets provide him with a lot of material, and he really allows them to dominate, emphasising both their height and depth, in the early scenes showing the disinherited Lillian Gish dwarfed within them. But he knows to keep focus on the characters by placing us inside the action, for example with the point-of-view shots of the musicians when Gish and Ronald Colman sit together on the wall. He is also able to move right in on a personal level, such as his memorable introduction to Gish, a face peeping through a barred window. Throughout the picture he is juxtaposing the big canvas with the little. For example, when Gish's carriage rides away after her goodbye to Colman, we get a close-up of her pulling down the blind, followed by the carriage receding away down a lonely looking street – the emptiness of the latter image complements the emotional moment of the former.

As for Miss Gish, this were first picture since parting ways with her mentor D.W. Griffith. Her recent performances for that great director had not been impressive. For one thing she had too often been cast as a teenager and encouraged to put on a twee girly act. Secondly in pictures like Broken Blossoms and Orphans of the Storm she had been unbearably hammy, throwing wild gestures and pulling faces in every scene. The White Sister finds her refreshingly understated, just as she was in her earliest Griffith pictures. In scenes such as the one where she meets Colman after being turfed out of her home, or the moment she takes her vows, her face is passive, her emotions stifled, but clearly burning below the surface. Of course, when she is lead to believe that her love has been killed her reaction is extreme, but this is natural given the context, and compared to the subtlety of the rest of her performance it has all the necessary impact. In some of her later Griffith movies Gish would have reacted like that if she heard the next-door neighbour had a cough.

Ultimately however The White Sister bears the traits of a movie industry seeking to become more literate and prestigious, in that its title cards are too long and too many. At 143 minutes this is not a short picture, and a lot of that runtime is accounted for by wordage that would be better left out. After all, King's images are so meaningful, and Gish's performance is so intelligent, there is no need to break them up with a lot of text. We even get a title pointing out that the portrait of Gish as a nun by her lovelorn admirer shows her as an unattainable ideal, forcing the symbolism upon the audience rather than allowing them to interpret it for themselves. Incidentally Henry King was also the producer, and while not actually responsible for writing the titles he certainly would have had final say over what was included, so perhaps to some extent he lacked confidence in his own ability to tell a story visually. Whatever the case, it makes what could be one of the more sophisticated melodramas of its era just a bit more boring than it ought to be.