Film Details

New England’s foremost silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis, who blogs about his career at jeffrapsis.com, returns to the Cinematheque to provide live keyboard accompaniment to this potent drama made by Lillian Gish and the great Swedish director Victor Sjöström/Seastrom (star of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries). Released two years before their immortal The Wind, Gish and Sjöström’s adaptation of Hawthorne’s literary classic—about adultery and intolerance in 17th-century Salem—has a real feel for rural America and is also surprisingly erotic. Gish gives one of her greatest performances as Hester Prynne, the Puritan woman who falls for her pastor (Swedish actor Lars Hanson). 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The Scarlet Letter will be preceded at 7:00 by another 1926 American silent, Leo McCarey’s Mighty Like a Moose starring Charley Chase. It’s one of the era’s greatest comedy shorts. DCP. Total running time approx. 2 hrs.