Editor's Top Picks Following the Footsteps of The Lone Wolf: Cult G...

Dir: Herbert Brenon

In her third picture, Bara is the wife-vampire.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

Jacqueline Laurentine Boggs, the daughter of an American hog farmer, is schooled in France and comes to stay with an English family. There she brings a dose of reality to her snobby hosts.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Wonderful Thing perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

A French orphan girl is adopted by a wealthy British nobleman. The family lives happily, unaware that a plot is afoot to kidnap the girl and make away with the nobleman's fortune.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

A sultan agrees to help a wicked witch destroy a mysterious young lady if the witch will bring his young son back from the dead with magic.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of 12.10 perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

Joan is loved by a young man of the village and they are married. In a few weeks the husband, a soldier, is sent to the war-front along with his three brothers. Word is received that her husband has been killed in battle and Joan's first impulse is suicide by she is pregnant and her prospective motherhood makes her realize her new responsibility. The military authorities start a movement to get the young women of the country to marry departing soldiers, so that the empire may have another generation of fighting men. Word is received that the King is to pass through their village and Joan organizes the women in a general protest against the war. She leads them all, dressed in black, in a long procession to meet the Monarch. The soldiers threaten to shoot her unless she turns the women back, buy Joan comes face-to-face with the ruler and kills herself, as her message from the women that they refuse to make another generation victims of a ruthless militarism.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

Italian peasant girl deserts her fiancé for wealthy gangster and departs for America.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of A Daughter of the Gods perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

To a rooming house which has fallen on hard times comes The Stranger, an unknown but gentle man who is given the back room on the third floor. His arrival marks a change in the lives of all the boarders, from the girl resisting her parents' pleas that she marry the lecherous Mr. Wright, to an architect and a pianist, both of whose dreams are near destruction from their own discouragement.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

In Paris, the beautiful orphan Henriette is kidnapped by the Marquis de Presles, a libertine, leaving her blind and defenseless friend Louise wandering the streets alone. While Mother Frochard, a beggar and thief, forces Louise to beg for her food, Henriette is rescued by the Chevalier de Vaudrey, who loves her. The chevalier's mother, the Countess De Liniere, discovers that Louise is her long-lost daughter and resolves to find her. In the meantime, Mother Frochard's son, a hunchback named Pierre, falls in love with Louise, and when his brother Jacques cruelly beats the girl, Pierre kills him. Just then, the countess locates Louise, and after the girl regains her sight, she is joined with Pierre. The countess then gives her consent to the marriage of her son and Henriette.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of War Brides perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

The secret marriage of a farmer and servant girl in an English household leads to a child born that is not believed to be legitimate.

Dir: Herbert Brenon

Ann Hunniwell, innocently accompanying Frank Devereaux, her employer's son, to a questionable New York cafe, is arrested in a raid and is photographed by a newspaperman, although Devereaux manages to obtain the negative. Five years later she is the wife of "Lafe" Regan, a man of high character and social standing. Her stepdaughter, Helen, becomes involved with Devereaux, who has also had an affair with the wife of Colonel Gaunt. When the colonel threatens to shoot Devereaux, Regan stalls him, while Ann follows Helen to Frank's apartment; after an oral conflict, Regan shoots Devereaux and leaves a "Not To Be Disturbed" sign on the door. Ann tries to take the blame and shield her family, but the district attorney, having posed as the photographer years before, believes Ann is equally guiltless now and frees her and her husband, stating that no jury would convict Regan on his plea of "Self-Defense."