Cinematic Discoveries Resonating with the Themes of The Nation's Peril: Cult Guide

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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

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Factory owner John Gray takes ill during a strike at his factory. His doctor suggests that John's brother David, who looks just like him, take his place at home and at the factory. Although the two are look exactly like each other, in temperament and personality they are exact opposites--John is cruel and brutish to both his family and his employees, while David is considerate, thoughtful and kind to everyone. When John sees the effect that David has on his employees--and his wife--by treating them humanely, he begins to re-evaluate the way his own life has turned out, and why.

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

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After school one day, Violet, who associates with wicked boys bent on deceiving young girls, persuades her friend Louise to go riding with a couple of boys. Louise, suspicious of the boys' intentions, demands to be taken home. After Louise confesses that she lied to her mother about the escapade, her mother gives her Faust to read. Faust, an old man, sells his soul to the devil for one year of youth to win Marguerite. Marguerite succumbs and soon becomes enshrouded in darkness. The story causes Louise to refuse to meet the boys again. After Violet goes to a distant city with a boy who promises to marry her, Louise receives a letter asking her to help. She follows, and after learning from Violet of the boy's deception, Louise is lured into an apartment by the boy's friend. She attempts to jump from a ten-story window, but the boy catches her. Louise awakens to discover that she has been dreaming since reading Faust and then relates her lesson to Violet.

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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

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

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A nervous business man is pursued by what he thinks are visions of the same girl in many places. The latter turns out to be an authoress who changes jobs frequently in order to get literary material.

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A jealous leading lady does herself out of money and honor, while the object of her jealousy steps in, carries the show and wins the love of the play's author.

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

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A rich artist has never completed a master painting because he could not find a model for the face, sees the wife of a man in hard luck begging on the street so she can buy milk for her baby, and the artist secures just what he desired.

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Episode 1: "The Jade Necklace" Dorothy Desmond, an inexperienced Kentucky girl whose father, an editor, had been shot at his desk by a political opponent, and whose mother had dropped dead of shock, found herself left virtually penniless. She believed she had a gift for writing and came to New York to seek a position on a newspaper. She was assigned to Chinatown to get an opium den story. She missed her escort and bravely and foolishly went to Chinatown alone. She yielded to the invitation of a Chinaman to enter his shop and inspect some beads, and he was at the point of attacking her when a storm of revolver shots broke, and a tong war was on. At the crack of the first pistol the Chinese shopkeeper desisted from his evil designs and shoved Dorothy into a secret room, the door of which he closed and locked on the outside. The girl was mad with fear. To her through the deadening walls came the sounds of the shooting. Then the shots ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and she heard faintly the gongs of police ambulances and patrols. Had she been liberated she would have seen white-jacketed emergency surgeons and orderlies picking up dead and wounded Chinamen and putting them into the wagons, while blue-coated officers with busy clubs rounded up other Chinamen, dragging them from all sorts of odd holes and corners and packing them into patrol wagons. "Worst tong fight in years," a sergeant observed pleasantly to a newspaper man. "Seven dead already, and some of the wounded sure to die. These Chinks shoot mighty straight for heathen. In the dark, too. What always puzzled me was how one tong could spot the other tong when they get mixed up in one of these nasty little wars. All Chinks look pretty much alike to me. You can never find out what started one of those shooting festivals. They won't tell a white man a thing. We can take our fill of guessing, though. Maybe it was a woman taken away from a member of one tong by a member of another. Maybe it was opium, maybe, you can think up a whole lot of maybes if you try, but what's the use"?

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of She's Everywhere perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

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Following a prologue which shows that animals frequently desert their young, a jilted prehistoric suitor murders the child of the woman he loves. During the age of the Roman Empire, a soldier has a brief affair with a shepherdess, and long after he has left, she has their child. The shepherdess looks for the father, but returns brokenhearted after finding him with another woman, and then dies while saving her child from a poisonous snake. During the Elizabethan era, a wayward son seeks spiritual redemption through war, and is killed in battle. In modern times, a young, impoverished husband refuses to start a family, despite the pleadings of his wife. Then, when he finally starts earning enough money to consider children, his wife has an accident that makes it impossible for her to become pregnant.

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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.