Deliverance

1919 Drama 90 minutes Directed by George Foster Platt

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About Deliverance

Helen Keller loses sight and hearing as a small child. At seven her parents hire Anne Sullivan, herself blind for seventeen years. An allegorical Ignorance hunts Helen, and Knowledge, a woman in white, tries to lift her. Sullivan teaches her the names of things by signs, against Helen's resistance. Sarah Fuller later teaches her to speak. A parallel story follows Nadja, a laborer's daughter who will not use her school and ends in a sweatshop. A violinist, Josef, marries Nadja and dies before their child is born. That child comes back from the World War blind. Nadja takes him to Helen. The two women work in a hospital for blinded and injured soldiers. Keller, Sullivan, Kate Adams Keller, and Phillips Brooks Keller also appear as themselves.

Cast & crew

More about Deliverance

George Foster Platt directed. Francis Trevelyan Miller wrote the script. Lawrence Fowler and Arthur L. Todd photographed it. Anselm Goetzl wrote the music. George Kleine System distributed it. Wikipedia times it at 90 minutes. Helen Keller Film Corporation is the production company. Etna Ross plays the child Helen. Ann Mason plays Helen as a young woman. Edith Lyle plays the younger Sullivan.

Themes

  • A child taught by signs
  • Ignorance played as a figure
  • A second girl who wastes her school
  • Soldiers blinded in the war
  • Helen Keller
  • Anne Sullivan
  • Nadja
  • Ignorance
  • signs
  • World War I
  • hospital

Background

The closing stretch uses the World War: Nadja's son returns blind, and Helen works with soldiers.

Making

Keller's own company put her and Sullivan on screen beside actresses playing their younger selves. The Nadja plot is an invention set against the biography, ending in a wartime hospital.

Look

Lawrence Fowler and Arthur L. Todd shot both the acted childhood and the passages in which Keller and Sullivan play themselves.

Music

Anselm Goetzl wrote the score for the silent film.

Preservation

A print is on Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

  • Tula Belle plays the young Nadja. Betty Schade plays Kate Adams Keller as a young woman.
  • Jenny Lind plays Martha Washington. Sarah Lind plays Mammy. Polly Thompson appears as Helen's secretary.
  • The acted life and the appearances by the real Keller and Sullivan are cut together.
  • Wikidata times one copy at 85 minutes. Wikipedia says 90.
  • A Commons file is titled Deliverance.webm.

Scenes

  • Sullivan starts naming objects for the child who will not be managed.
  • Ignorance and Knowledge are staged as figures fighting over Helen.
  • Nadja brings her blinded son to Helen after the war.

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (Deliverance.webm)