Summary
A mis-thrown bomb, a butcher’s heir dragged into the lair of the very cell sworn to eviscerate his bloodline, and a woman whose vendetta mutates into maternal ache: The Suspect is a 1916 whirlwind in which revolutionary fuse meets domestic hearth. Sophie Karrinini, phantom-general of the nihilists, once watched her parents flayed alive by Karatoff’s cruelty; now she nurses the butcher’s son Paul back to vigor, wedding him so the enemy’s grandchild will breathe beneath a red flag. Motherhood corrodes ideology, love corrodes revenge, and a single icy plunge erases Paul’s past—until five fog-choked English years later a clandestine conclave resurrects every ghost. Shots crack, memory floods back, and the child Jack becomes prince of a fractured empire while Sophie, stripped of cause and kin, walks toward a muted English dawn beside a chivalric stranger.
Synopsis
Mouroff's aim is bad; the bomb which he threw at Karatoff, the butcher, explodes harmlessly many feet away. Karatoff's son Paul, puts spurs to his horse, and chases the nihilist. The latter is elusive, but Paul trails him and enters a house after him. Once inside, Valdor, another nihilist, stuns Paul with a blow from his club and carries him to his apartment. Valdor would willingly let him die from loss of blood, but Sophie commands him to heal the wound. This, at first, puzzles Valdor, coming as it does from Sophie Karrinini, leader of the nihilists and one who has ample reasons to hate Karatoff and his kin, but in an undertone, she explains. The sight of Paul Karatoff rouses to her mind vivid recollections of the scene, years before, when Paul's father compelled her to stand helplessly by, while her father was tortured to death, and her mother had died from the effects of the gruesome sight. Now what is the one little life of Paul Karatoff? She can find better ways to strike at the butcher's heart, by allowing him to live. Paul returns to consciousness, and Sophie gives him her most tender care. She listens, apparently horrified, to his tale of the attempt on his father's life. Soon, he is well enough to be moved, and is returned in safety to his father, cherishing in his heart, a love for Sophie. He asks her to be his bride. This being the first step in her plan, she readily consents. Karatoff's son the husband of a nihilist. But then their child is born, and with the boon of motherhood comes the realization that she loves Paul more than the cause. Having heard rumors of his wife's affiliation with the nihilists, Paul confronts her with the evidence and she confesses. He leaves to expose her, but is waylaid and stunned by Valdor, who throws his apparently lifeless form into the ice of the river. Mouroff, on the way to the market, finds the body, and seeing signs of life, takes it home with him. When Paul awakes, his memory is gone and Mouroff brings him up as a nihilist. Valdor returns to Sophie and tells her that the police have killed her husband. Five years later while traveling in England under an assumed name, Sophie meets Sir Richard Stanhope, an English nobleman, and they become interested in each other. Karatoff captures a nihilist messenger from whom he learns of a meeting of the band, and being unknown to the members, he takes the place of the messenger. He meets Richard, to whom he is known, and explains the reason for his assumed name. Mouroff receives the call to the meeting and takes Paul along. At the meeting Mouroff recognizes and denounces Karatoff and the true identities of all are established. While Karatoff is greeting his son, a shot is fired, intended for Karatoff, but it kills Paul. The police rush into the place and arrest all present, including Richard who had just appeared on the scene. Little Jack, Sophie's son, is now a Prince. His pleas for his mother's freedom are finally granted by his grandfather, Karatoff, with whom he returns to Russia to fulfill the duties of his heritage. Sophie now leaves her nihilistic tendencies behind, as she travels, in peace, at last, to England with Richard.
Review Excerpt
"
The first time I saw the nitrate glow of The Suspect I felt the celluloid itself pulse like a bruised artery. Forgotten for a century, this 1916 Vitagraph firecracker—directed with bruised lyricism by S. Rankin Drew—unfurls like a fever dream stitched from dynamite smoke and lullabies. It is less a story than a chemical reaction: revolutionary nitrate meets human tissue, ideology meets oxytocin, Tsarist cruelty meets the tender trap of motherhood.
Picture the opening: a Petroffian winter night..."
