East Lynne
Summary
East Lynne, exhumed from 1916 celluloid, is a mordant Victorian fever-dream in which carnal restlessness masquerades as moral instruction: Lady Isabel Carlyle, stifled by the lace-trimmed rectitude of her husband’s country estate, succumbs to the perfumed flattery of a penniless rake; a single moonlit elopement detonates the sanctities of matrimony, motherhood and class. Rumoured pulped beneath a locomotive’s iron wheels, she is reborn—face bandaged, name erased—as the wan governess tending her own oblivious children in the very parlour where her portrait once preened. Each candlelit corridor becomes a confessional, each lullaby a threnody, until scarlet guilt corrodes the masquerade and death arrives as the ultimate, welcome chaperone.
Synopsis
A woman leaves her husband and children for mistaken reasons. After being thought killed in a train crash, she returns in disguise to be the children's governess.
Director
Theda Bara, Ben Deeley, Stuart Holmes, Claire Whitney
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mary Murillo, Mrs. Henry Wood
