Summary
Sun-bleached limestone cliffs, salt-stung cypress and the thrum of an Atlantic foghorn frame a baroque pas de quatre between innocence, amnesia and ancestral shame. Raoul Mendoza—celebrated Parisian maître d’armes—exiles his coquettish daughter Caprice to a windswept Midi lighthouse, imagining citrus-scented chastity; instead the outcrop becomes a mirage-strewn stage where three men orbit her like maddened planets. Jean, the taciturn keeper’s son, carries torchlight devotion; Hannibal, a ship-wrecked sailor with no past, nurses mute adoration; the serpentine Marquise de Bregant—gold-brocaded predator—arrives trailing salon whispers and colonial blood-dust. When a moonlit tryst in the lantern room detonates Hannibal’s dormant memories, identities fracture: the marquis is unveiled as usurper of Bolivian bullion and murderer of the very man who now—face salt-scarred—stands before him. Pursuit shifts from coral coves to gas-lit Paris, where abduction, forged vows and a foiled narcotic seduction hurl Caprice through cabarets, convents and finally a dawn-lit forest clearing where ancestral steel sings a last, irreversible sentence.
Synopsis
Raoul Mendoza, a famous swordsman, in order to save his daughter from the temptations of Paris, sends her to the tropical South of France, to live with an old lighthouse keeper and his wife and son. Sometime later Mendoza is stricken with illness and is advised by his doctor to take a complete rest and an immediate change of air. Mendoza decides to join his daughter in the south. Through cunning, Marquise de Bregant secures an invitation from Mendoza to join in the trip and he accepts. Meanwhile, Caprice, the daughter of Mendoza is, quite unknown to her, loved by Jean, the son of Charcot, the old lighthouse keeper. She is also worshiped by Hannibal, an assistant at the lighthouse to Charcot, a mysterious man who was picked up on the sands, shipwrecked and never regained his memory. Mendoza and Bregant arrive at the village and Caprice is at once attracted by Bregant. Jean is jealous, and Hannibal, when he meets Bregant, almost awakened out of his dormant lethargy, behaves in a peculiar fashion. Juliette, having followed Bregant, arrives and meets him secretly. Caprice takes Bregant over the lighthouse. There is a little lovemaking which Hannibal sees and attacks Bregant in spite of the pleadings of Caprice. During the struggle Bregant recognizes Hannibal. Bregant makes arrangements with Caprice to elope. Hannibal finds out all, tells Mendoza, but he disbelieves him. Hannibal leaves and while gazing out of the window, Bregant passes. An old negro in his way begs alms. He knocks him down; the negro rises and he fells him again and beats and kicks him mercilessly as he lies on the ground. The fight partly restores Hannibal's memory, and he returns to Mendoza and reveals the hidden past. Two men went to South America on an exploring expedition, one was the Marquis de Bregant, the other Count Chambord. They were very successful, but particularly Chambord, who located gold mines. Bregant was, in consequence, exceedingly jealous. One day Bregant beat an old porter into insensibility. Chambord interfered, but was soon felled by Bregant, who took the latter's papers and returned to France, where he was acclaimed with high honors, giving out that poor Chambord died of fever. In the meantime, Chambord was nursed back to life by the natives, but his memory never returned and he eventually found himself upon a ship as a sailor until wrecked upon the shores of the South of France, where he remained as assistant lighthouse keeper to Charcot. As he finishes the story, Jean rushes in with the news that Bregant had gone off in his yacht and taken Caprice with him. The shock of such news is too much for Mendoza, and he is stricken with paralysis. Meanwhile, Caprice, who only consented to leave with Bregant under the promise of marriage on the boat, Bregant having told her that he had the minister, discovers that it is all a fraud. He fails in his attempt to drug her, and when he leaves to procure assistance, she locks herself in a cabin. When they reach port, Caprice escapes with the captain's assistance. Meantime, Jean, who has come to Paris in search of Caprice, by chance, one day, meets her. He persuades her to return to her father, who forgives her for her actions. Jean locates Bregant one night in a restaurant with his paramour, and a duel is arranged for the next day. Mendoza's prayer for the return of his strength is answered, and he swears vengeance upon his enemy. In the morning Bregant arrives in the woods to fight Jean, but to his horror and amazement, he meets Mendoza. Realizing he is doomed, he tries to avoid a fight, but is forced to it, and after a very thrilling encounter he is killed. Mendoza, Caprice and Jean then leave Paris forever to settle in the beautiful spot where Caprice spent her childhood days.
Review Excerpt
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There is a moment—two-thirds through Tom Terriss’s unjustly neglected The Pearl of the Antilles—when the beam of a coastal lighthouse slices across the 35-mm nitrate like a scalpel of repressed memory. In that stroboscopic flash we glimpse Hannibal’s pupils dilating with the horror of half-remembered Andean atrocities. It is 1921, yet the shot feels almost expressionistic, a visual shriek heralding the collapse of Empire-era complacency. Few silents marshal such concise psychology through pure ..."
