Summary
A clapboard chapel squats on the edge of a nameless American nowhere, its steeple skewed like a crooked finger beckoning the desperate. Inside, the Reverend Robert Martin—collar starched, eyes cold as communion silver—exhorts his rag-tag congregation to seek light while his nimble-fingered disciples slit coat pockets and lift coin purses with devotional precision. The sermon is scripture; the collection plate, a sieve. Abandoned years earlier by a wife who vanished into mythic dusk, Martin has weaponized that wound, turning divine rhetoric into alibi, sanctity into screen. Enter Joan, his grown daughter, ignorant of the family business, clutching a suitcase and a heart full of father-shaped hope. Her arrival detonates the reverend’s last grand scheme: one final fleece before the flock scatters. But the sky, long silent, chooses sides. A tempest unfurls—black clouds bruise the horizon, wind howls through the clapboards like an Old Testament prophet, and a jagged spear of electricity crashes through the window, flash-burning the retinas of the sham holy man and igniting the tinder-dry rafters. Flames lick hymnals, smoke swallows Joan. In that crucible of fire and failure, Martin, sightless and broken, bargains with the God he has serially pickpocketed. Miraculously, Joan coughs back to life; the blaze recedes. Vision gone, soul returned, the reverend stumbles into contrition. His troupe—awed, superstitious, perhaps half-redeemed—lay down their razors and bent pins. When the smoke finally clears, two last mercies arrive: the prodigal wife, weather-worn but breathing, and the gradual return of light to Martin’s eyes. The chapel, half-charred yet still standing, becomes a tabernacle of second chances.
Synopsis
The Rev. Robert Martin, having been deserted by his wife years earlier, seizes upon that injustice as an excuse to lead a life of crime. Martin preaches the gospel while his band of pickpockets relieve his worshipers of their hard earned money. When his daughter Joan, who is unaware of her father's nefarious practices, joins the troupe, the reverend decides to make his last crooked deal. That night, a great thunderstorm sweeps through the area, and while the reverend is standing at the window, a bolt of lightning blinds him and sets fire to the house. In the flames, Joan is overcome with smoke and the reverend prays for her recovery. Miraculously, his prayers are answered, restoring the holy man's faith. With their leader's conversion, the members of his troupe also reform and the reverend finally is rewarded when his wife and his sight are both restored to him.
Review Excerpt
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The Stealers is less a movie than a scorched psalm, a 1921 one-reeler that somehow feels like it was shot on brimstone and edited with a penitent’s belt whip. Christy Cabanne—Griffith protégé turned cynical moralist—delivers a tale of counterfeit faith so brazen it could make Elmer Gantry blush. The premise alone crackles: a preacher doubling as Fagin-in-a-cassock, fleecing his flock while reciting the Sermon on the Mount. But it’s the film’s visual grammar—its chiaroscuro interiors, its lightn..."
