'Tween Heaven and Earth

Summary

In a soot-choked industrial nowhere, sleepless patriarch Herr Rückert drifts through his cathedral-sized factory on nightly chloroform clouds while his daughter Eva, part Pre-Raphaelite sylph, part gear-oiled muse, secretly courts Ralph Dennison—the soft-spoken engineer whose blueprints hum louder than the furnaces. Briggs, the works manager with a carnivorous smile, stalks the catwalks like Iago in a bowler, sabotaging ladders of both steel and affection. A single boating incident—Briggs’s pawing hands repelled, Eva’s kid brother watching—mutates into a vertical vendetta: the manager ascends the chimney’s black esophagus at midnight, pries away the ladder rungs, and leaves a yawning death-trap for his rival. Dawn finds Ralph baited into the climb; Eva’s warning letter arrives too late, the pulley block crashes earthward, and the two antagonists wrestle on a lip of brick with nothing beneath them but sky and guilt. Inside the shaft, workmen swarm like termites yet are thwarted by Briggs’s earlier treachery. Ralph, recalling a child’s kite string, scribbles a plea, dopes the dozing Briggs with the father’s own chloroform, and drops the line; a small boy launches the kite, the string becomes lifeline, a revolver’s bark summons rescuers. Briggs—already a ghost from an overdose—swings limp in the updraft; Ralph, hair turned ash-white, stands trial for manslaughter, walks free, and collapses into Eva’s arms as the whistle screams a requiem for the industrial age.

Synopsis

The owner of the great works seen in the film is afflicted with insomnia, and uses chloroform. His daughter, Eva, loves young Dennison, her father's engineer, much to the chagrin of Briggs, the works' manager. The latter uses every endeavor to belittle Ralph in the eyes of his sweetheart, and is present at the inspection of a huge chimney under course of repair. Eva and her father are also present, and Briggs insinuates that Ralph is afraid, when Eva dissuades him from journeying to the top of the shaft. On the way home, Eva's little brother forms one of the party, and Ralph, ever willing, is prevailed upon to procure a ball of cord for the youngster's kite; also the usual modicum of drugs for Eva's father. Briggs, during the absence of the younger man, forces his attentions on Eva while she is boating with her brother, and is repulsed. He evolves a scheme of revenge, and, at night, goes to the shaft, which he ascends from the inside and removes the top series of steps from its walls. On the following morning Ralph is given a letter warning him against Briggs, and in which Eva entreats him not to trust him. The works' manager is standing near and again taunts Ralph with his fear, with the result that the latter decides to ascend the chimney forthwith. Eva and her father arrive to witness the two men nearing the top of the huge shaft, and the girl's fears are soon realized to the full, for a violent quarrel is seen to be going on between the two, A few seconds later and the pulley block and rope come hurtling through space, Briggs having detached them from the cross bar, thus cutting off communication with the ground below. A terrific struggle follows, and the two men are seen at each other's throats on a perilous footing afforded by the brickwork. The brave workmen are making efforts to scale the interior, but are prevented by Brigg's rascally scheme. Ralph suddenly thinks of the cord for the youngster's kite, and is dropping this down when Briggs overpowers him. At last the villain dozes, tired out from his exertions, and Ralph, taking the drug from his pocket, plentifully dopes him, then throws down a note requesting the boy to fly the kite as soon as daylight permits. At dawn the kite is skillfully raised and we see it near the top of the shaft, where Ralph and the now securely bound Briggs are. The latter does not move, but Dennison is too intent upon the kite to notice him. At last the frail messenger of deliverance is within reach, and Ralph takes the revolver from Briggs' side, firing several shots as a signal. A rope is drawn up, and Ralph is enabled to reach the men who have scaled far up the interior of the chimney. He is assisted to earth and is seen to have turned absolutely gray from his trial. Briggs is found to be dead, having succumbed to the overdose of chloroform, Ralph is charged with manslaughter, but is finally acquitted of the charge, and the last scene shows the lovers free at last from care and delivered from a villain's treachery.