Movie Description
Orphans of the Storm is a 1921 drama film by D. W. Griffith set in late-18th-century France, before and during the French Revolution.
The last Griffith film to feature Lillian and Dorothy Gish, it is often considered Griffith's last major commercial success, after box-office hits such as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Broken Blossoms.
Like his earlier films, Griffith used historical events to comment on contemporary events, in this case the French Revolution to warn about the rise of Bolshevism. The film is about class conflict and a plea for inter-class understanding and against destructive hatred. At one point, in front of the Committee of Public Safety, a main character pleads, "Yes I am an aristocrat, but a friend of the people."
The film is based on the 1874 French play "Les Deux Orphelines" by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugene Cormon, which had been adapted for the American stage by N. Hart Jackson and Albert Marshman Palmer as The Two Orphans, premiering at Marshman Palmer's Union Square Theatre (58 E. 14th St.) in New York City in December 1874 with Kate Claxton as Louise. It had been filmed in the United States twice before Griffith did his film: in 1911 by Otis Turner and in 1915 by Herbert Brenon (the lost Theda Bara film The Two Orphans). The play had also been filmed twice in France in 1910: by Albert Capellani and by Georges Monca.
(Summary from Wikipedia)
Copyright Info: This movie is in the public domain and is legally available for free on YouTube.