The Whispering Chorus
About The Whispering Chorus
John Tremble, a poor cashier, listens to a voice that tells him to steal and takes $1,000 from his employer. He hides on an island. While fishing he finds a dead man, switches clothes, and mutilates the face so the body will pass for his own. His family is told he was murdered. Living under another name, he is caught and tried for that murder. His former wife Jane, now married to the governor, does not know him in court. He is convicted of killing himself and goes to the electric chair rather than expose her.
Cast & crew
More about The Whispering Chorus
Cecil B. DeMille directed, produced, and edited the film. Jeanie MacPherson wrote it from Perley Poore Sheehan's 1918 story. Alvin Wyckoff photographed it. Famous Players-Lasky and Artcraft made it. Paramount released it on March 25, 1918. Chicago censors cut the ledger close-up, the theft, a bottle blow, a woman enticing a man, a policeman striking a man, and the shot of the electric-chair lever.
Themes
Background
Paramount released the film in March 1918, while city and state boards were still cutting features scene by scene before they could open.
Making
DeMille uses superimposed faces to show the voices pushing Tremble to steal and then to fake his death. City boards cut both the theft and the electrocution lever.
Look
Alvin Wyckoff photographed the double exposures of the mocking, evil, and good faces that crowd Tremble, and the trial that ends at the electric chair.
Preservation
Complete prints are held by the George Eastman Museum on 35mm, by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, by the Academy Film Archive, and by the BFI.
Notes
- Raymond Hatton plays John Tremble. Kathlyn Williams plays Jane. Elliott Dexter plays George Coggeswell, the governor she marries. Edythe Chapman plays John's mother.
- Gustav von Seyffertitz plays the Mocking Face, one of the double-exposed voices around John. Walter Lynch is the Evil Face and Edna Mae Cooper the Good Face.
- Julia Faye, Jack Mulhall, and Charles Ogle have uncredited bits.
- Wikipedia calls it the earliest film classed as a psychological drama.
Scenes
- The superimposed faces argue Tremble into taking the money.
- He swaps clothes with a dead man and ruins the face so it will be buried as his.
- Jane sits in court and does not know the defendant. He is strapped into the chair.
Influenced by
- The Whispering Chorus (story, 1918)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Whispering Chorus (1918).webm)
