The Captive
About The Captive
In the Balkan Wars, Sonia Martinovich keeps a small farm in Montenegro with her brothers until the elder, Marko, is killed at Lüleburgaz. A captured Turkish nobleman, Mahmud Hassan, is sent to do the work she cannot. She drives him with a bullwhip. He befriends her younger brother, and the two fall in love. When Ottoman troops retake the village, Hassan stops a drunken Turkish officer from assaulting her and is stripped of his title. Scavengers burn the farm. Sonia, Mahmud, and the boy meet on the road and leave together.
Cast & crew
More about The Captive
Cecil B. DeMille directed, edited, and produced it with Jesse L. Lasky. He and Jeanie Macpherson wrote the screenplay from their own play. Costumes and the Eastern European setting were carried over from The Unafraid. Paramount released it on 22 April 1915, in five reels. The production cost $12,154 and took in over $56,000.
Themes
Background
The First Balkan War had ended in 1913. Lasky and DeMille used it as a backdrop for a romance between a Montenegrin woman and a Turkish prisoner.
Making
DeMille staged the fighting for what trade papers called extreme realism. The live-ammunition accident ended with an extra dead on the set. Sweet later called her time with DeMille a terrible one and said she was terrified of him.
Reviews
Motion Picture News said Sweet had scored the greatest success of her career. Trade copy compared the sets to a Broadway production.
Preservation
A complete 35mm print, found in the Paramount vault in 1970, is at the Library of Congress.
Notes
- Blanche Sweet plays Sonia. House Peters plays Mahmud Hassan. Page Peters plays Marko, Gerald Ward plays the younger brother, and Theodore Roberts plays the burgomaster.
- Jeanie Macpherson, DeMille's screenwriter, also acts in the film, as Milka. William Elmer plays the Turkish officer.
- Sweet and Peters had just played together in The Warrens of Virginia, made by the same team.
- An extra was shot and killed during a battle scene. Later accounts name him Charles Chandler. Sweet said DeMille had encouraged extras to load live rounds instead of blanks. Scott Eyman's biography of DeMille gives the dead man's name as Bob Fleming.
- Thought lost, a complete 35mm print was found in the Paramount vault in 1970 and given to the Library of Congress.
Scenes
- Sonia keeps Hassan in line with a bullwhip while he hauls water and plows.
- Hassan strikes a Turkish officer who tries to force himself on Sonia.
- The three of them walk off together after the farm is burned and Hassan has lost his title.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons
- Olive Films Blu-ray (2016)
