The Scarlet Letter
About The Scarlet Letter
Hester Prynne marries Roger Prynne to please her father. While Roger is away she walks the woods with the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and they fall in love. When their child is born she is ordered to wear the letter of an adulteress and will not name the father. She faces the jeers of the Puritan town and fights to keep the child, Pearl. On the public scaffold Dimmesdale, who has wanted and feared to share her shame, confesses and dies in her arms.
Cast & crew
More about The Scarlet Letter
Victor Sjöström, billed as Victor Seastrom, directed and produced. Frances Marion adapted Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel. Lillian Gish asked Louis B. Mayer for the picture. It was her second film under her MGM contract, after King Vidor's La Bohème. Mayer hesitated because of censors. Shooting took under two months. The published production cost of $417,000 leaves out $48,000 in overhead. Cedric Gibbons and Sidney Ullman were the art directors. Hugh Wynn edited.
Themes
Background
Marion and Sjöström open the story in Puritan Boston on a Sabbath in June, before the novel's prison-door chapter, and have Hester reveal the letter on a high scaffold.
Look
Hendrik Sartov photographed the film during a shoot that ran under two months.
Music
William Axt and David Mendoza wrote the score, both uncredited on screen.
Preservation
Prints are in the MGM/United Artists film archives and at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Notes
- Lars Hanson plays Dimmesdale. Henry B. Walthall plays Roger, credited as Roger Prynne rather than Chillingworth. Joyce Coad plays Pearl.
- Karl Dane plays Master Giles, William H. Tooker the governor, and Marcelle Corday Mistress Hibbins.
- The opening title calls it a story of bigotry uncurbed.
- Turner Classic Movies lists 8,229 feet, nine reels, and 90 minutes. Senses of Cinema lists 87 minutes. Wikipedia lists 115 minutes.
- The film made a profit of $296,000.
- Photoplay named it one of the Best Pictures of the Month for October 1926.
Awards
- Photoplay Award, Best Pictures of the Month (October 1926)
Scenes
- Hester is led through a jeering crowd and, on the scaffold, shows the letter A.
- Dimmesdale confesses beside her on the scaffold and dies in her arms.
Influenced by
- The Scarlet Letter (novel)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Scarlet Letter (1926).webm)
Quotes
Hester Prynne's bird singing on the Lord's Day! What is Boston coming to?
Pearl... for she is indeed a pearl of great price.
