Summary
On a wind-lashed promontory above the Ligurian surge, Angela—keeper of the lantern, custodian of grief—pulses like a filament between two darknesses: the black Atlantic of 1918 and the vaster blackout of bereavement. Pickford’s face, powdered moon-white, is itself a lamp whose wick is memory; she trims it nightly, coaxing a trembling corona across breaker and basalt, while war communiqués roll in like fog. When the telegraph spits out the brothers’ names—two more extinguished stars—her body folds into itself, a marionette with severed strings, yet the beacon must still revolve, a cruel metronome counting what remains. Into this chiaroscuro washes a stranger: an American deserter, salt-crusted, pupils blown wide by torpedo glare. Their collision is less courtship than shipwreck—two driftwood souls slamming together, splinters and brine. Frances Marion’s screenplay refuses catharsis; instead it charts erosion: rosary beads snapped, wine laced with morphine, a wedding dress re-stitched from sailcloth. The final image—Angela alone atop the tower, cradling a foundling rather than a lover—freezes into a tableau both pietà and lighthouse: woman as warning, woman as waypoint, woman still burning.
Synopsis
Angela (Mary Pickford) maintains a coastal lighthouse in Italy, where she awaits the return of her brothers from the war. She learns they are casualties and takes solace in the arms of an American sailor washed ashore.
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