Summary
From the primordial depths of North Carolina's unforgiving mountains emerges Twilight, a foundling tethered to a donkey, a poignant testament to the wild's indifferent embrace and her father's watery demise. Rescued and christened by the benevolent Anwells, she blossoms into a spirited sixteen-year-old, her heart inextricably bound to Jim, her foster brother and the bedrock of the family's burgeoning lumber empire. A tempest of jealousy erupts at the Fireman's Ball when the sophisticated Elise Charmant, daughter of a renowned brain specialist, ensnares Jim's attention, prompting Twilight to instinctively pull the fire alarm—a desperate, primal shriek against perceived abandonment. This dramatic outburst, however, paradoxically illuminates Jim's true affections for her. Yet, serenity is fleeting. The insidious shadow of Jules, a French Canadian lumberman, looms large as he attempts to pilfer Jim's safe, only to escape his shackles and vanish into the wilderness. His subsequent brutal assault on Twilight, culminating in his apparent plunge from a precipice, shatters her psyche, plunging her into a profound, unyielding derangement that even the esteemed Dr. Charmant cannot ameliorate. Her miraculous recovery is predicated on Jules's unexpected reappearance, a harbinger of renewed terror, having set the very woods ablaze. In a harrowing confrontation, Twilight, demonstrating a nascent strength, wounds him with a gunshot, only for Jules to retaliate by cruelly handcuffing them together, condemning them both to a shared fate of slow demise. The ensuing odyssey of survival sees Jim valiantly carrying their conjoined burdens until his strength wanes, leaving Twilight, through sheer will and an indomitable spirit, to drag both her incapacitated lover and her chained tormentor to the precarious precipice of safety.
Synopsis
A baby, found strapped to a donkey in the North Carolina mountains where her father drowned, is called Twilight and raised by the Anwells. At sixteen, Twilight, in love with her foster brother Jim, who runs the family's lumber business, grows jealous when Elise Charmant, vacationing with her father, a brain specialist, monopolizes Jim at the Fireman's Ball. After Twilight rings the fire alarm to stop the flirtation, she learns that Jim loves her. After the French Canadian lumberman Jules is caught robbing Jim's safe, he slips out of one handcuff and escapes. After he attacks Twilight and falls over a cliff, she becomes deranged thinking that he died. Although Dr. Charmant cannot help her, Twilight recovers when Jules returns after setting the woods on fire. When he attacks her, she shoots him in the leg, but he then handcuffs her to him so that she cannot leave him to die. After Jim carries them until he is exhausted, Twilight drags Jules and Jim to safety.
Review Excerpt
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Twilight (1920): A Raw, Unfettered Journey into the Heart of the Wild
In the annals of early American cinema, where narrative often grappled with the nascent language of the moving image, certain films emerge as incandescent testaments to storytelling prowess. One such luminous artifact is the 1920 production, Twilight, a melodrama that transcends its genre confines to offer a visceral, psychologically charged exploration of love, madness, and sheer human endurance. Far from a mere period ..."
