Orphans of the Storm (1921) on Netflix
NR19212h 30mDramaHistoryRomance
A plague kills their parents and leaves Louise blind, so Henriette brings her to Paris for a cure. The Marquis de Praille abducts Henriette, and the Chevalier de Vaudrey helps her.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb7.3/105,803 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Abandoned as an infant on the steps of a church, Louise is found and raised by a peasant family beside their own daughter, Henriette, and the two grow up as sisters. When a plague carries off the parents, Louise is left blind, and Henriette vows to look after her, promising she will not marry until Louise can see her husband. They set out for Paris in search of a cure. On the road, the carriage of the aristocrat de Praille kills a child, and de Praille, struck by Henriette, has her seized and carried to his estate, while Louise is left to fend for herself in the city. Chevalier de Vaudrey, an aristocrat, fights a duel with de Praille and brings Henriette away, and Mother Frochard lures Louise into her house.
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Orphans of the Storm (1921)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The play behind the film, the 1874 French Les Deux Orphelines, reached America as The Two Orphans, a staple of actress Kate Claxton, who was performing it at Brooklyn Theater on the night of the 1876 fire there and had acquired its US rights.
- Griffith had to wrangle with actress Kate Claxton to secure the rights, and when a rival German version was ready for US release at the same time as his, he bought out its US distribution rights so it could not undercut his film.
SPOILER
The climactic last-minute rescue cuts between the guillotine and Lillian Gish's Henriette and Monte Blue's Danton racing on horseback with her pardon; the intercutting stretches three paces of walking to two or three times its length to build suspense.- Orphans of the Storm was the last film D. W. Griffith made with both Lillian and Dorothy Gish in the cast; his earlier works included The Birth of a Nation, Broken Blossoms and Way Down East.
- The film used monochromic filters of red, blue, green, yellow and sepia to show feeling along with the silent action and its music, and used fade-ins for the same purpose.
