The Unbeliever
About The Unbeliever
Philip Landicutt, rich and sure that people beneath him do not count, also despises anyone with German blood and does not believe in God. He joins the Marines. Training, the trenches, a wound, and a hospital shared with Germans change him. Raymond McKee plays Philip. Marguerite Courtot plays Virginie Harbrok. Erich von Stroheim plays Lieutenant Kurt von Schnieditz. Alan Crosland directed for Edison, from Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews’s novel The Three Things.
Cast & crew
More about The Unbeliever
George Kleine distributed it through the George Kleine System. Perfection Pictures is also on the AFI production line. Philip Tannura photographed it. J. Warde Hutton is credited with the music. Wikipedia dates the release 11 February 1918 and times it at 80 minutes. Copyright is 15 February 1918, LP12062. The AFI length is 6,468 feet. Men of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Regiment, U.S. Marine Corps appear. The company is Edison, not Fox. A print is at the Library of Congress.
Themes
Background
It was made as propaganda late in the First World War, with serving Marines in the picture.
Making
Edison, near the end of its own production, borrowed Marines from the 6th Regiment and had Crosland shoot Andrews’s novel as a wartime argument against Landicutt’s prejudices.
Look
Philip Tannura shot the training, the trenches, and the hospital.
Music
J. Warde Hutton is the music credit on the Wikipedia infobox for this silent film.
Preservation
A print is at the Library of Congress. Kino included the film on an Edison DVD set.
Notes
- Reviews often billed von Stroheim as Karl von Stroheim.
- The Chicago Board of Censors cut, in reel 4, an execution of a woman and child and two views of a man pulling a young woman’s waist down.
- McKee and Courtot married a few years after the film.
- Kino put it last on a DVD set of Edison shorts and features.
- A Commons file is titled The Unbeliever (1918).
Scenes
- Landicutt enters the Marines still sure of his class and his contempt.
- He is wounded and shares a hospital with German soldiers.
- Von Stroheim’s lieutenant is the German officer in that war.
Influenced by
- Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews’s novel The Three Things
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Unbeliever (1918).webm)
