Summary
In the brittle twilight of Edwardian mercantilism, William Harcourt—once a porcelain idol of the exchange floor—watches his fortune evaporate in a single, ink-stained ledger stroke. His townhouse, once a cathedral of chandeliers and hushed footmen, becomes an echoing shell; the servants are dismissed with the curt finality of a guillotine. Yet the social calendar, that tyrannical marionette, insists that dinner must still be served. Into this vacuum sweeps the promised visitation of Bill Bradford, Montana’s copper-crowned Midas, whose whims can sculpt railroads across virgin prairie. Harcourt and his regal spouse, cornered between pride and penury, perform a danse macabre of role-reversal: they knot starched aprons over evening dress, powdering their faces into the ghostly pallor of domestics, while their invited guests—Richard Thayer, a jaunty socialite, and Bessie Lane, whose laughter sparkles like cut crystal—ascend to the phantom throne of master and mistress. Silver cloches tremble, soufflés collapse, and the butler’s pantry becomes a carnival of mistaken silhouettes. Just as the masquerade threatens to combust, Bessie’s domineering father arrives, a second thunderclap in the drawing-room storm. Secrets spill like claret across damask; identities peel away like theatrical greasepaint. Bradford, genial giant of the Rockies, greets the charade with a belly-laugh that rattles the ancestral portraits, sealing the deal of a lifetime and handing Harcourt not merely a reprieve but a resurrection: a mine to sell, a future to manage, dignity restored beneath the gilt halo of a new contract.
Synopsis
William Harcourt loses all his money in a business transaction and is forced to dismiss his servants. Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt are about to entertain Richard Thayer and his fiancée Bessie Lane at dinner when they receive a message announcing the arrival of Montana millionaire Bill Bradford, a client of Harcourt's. Anxious to make a good impression, Harcourt and his wife disguise themselves as servants, while Thayer and his fiancée take the part of the Harcourts. Bradford's arrival causes much embarrassment, which is complicated by the arrival of Miss Lane's father. Everything is finally explained, and Bradford takes it all as a joke. He agrees to buy a mine from Harcourt and hires him as his general manager.
Review Excerpt
"
There is a delicious moment early in A Shocking Night when Florence Mayon’s panicked eyes flick toward the camera, a micro-expression that lasts perhaps four flickers of the shutter yet carries the weight of an entire collapsing world. It is 1920; the world is still gasping from influenza and shrapnel, and the American silent cinema—limber, irreverent—has discovered that social embarrassment can be every bit as cinematic as runaway locomotives. The film, brisk even by two-reeler standards, dist..."
