Summary
A municipal edict, framed as moral sanitation, evicts the scarlet sisterhood from their gas-lit warrens; the camera stalks the exodus—lace curtains yanked down, red lanterns smashed, corsets loaded onto drays like chattel. Among the displaced, Lila (Christine Mayo) trades her satin negligee for a frayed calico, eyes still flashing the defiant topaz of a woman who once named her own price. She drifts into a rooming house ruled by the genteel but ravenous Mrs. Perdy (Mabel Wright), a praying mantis in bombazine who pockets relief funds while leasing cubicles to the fallen. Across the hall, Anders Randolf’s Judge Whitaker—architect of the ordinance—plays penitent landlord, clutching a Bible like a life preserver yet stealing through the corridor to Lila’s cot, his lust sharpened by the very virtue he brandishes. Their nocturnal collisions ignite a chain of blackmails, betrayals, and a final conflagration in which the law’s marble façade cracks, revealing the same red pulp it sought to scour from the streets.
Synopsis
Reformers pass a law to force prostitutes out of the Red Light District.
Director
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