Vintage original 22 x 28 in. US half-sheet poster from the epic 1920s silent film drama, ORPHANS OF THE STORM, released in 1921 by United Artists and directed by D.W. Griffith.
This style depicts Henriette Girard (Lillian Gish) sewing while she talks with he blind sister, Louise (Dorothy Gish) inside their family home. This is the superior of the two styles of half-sheet posters and this example is in fine+ condition with minor restoration in the top border.
The cast includes Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Lucille La Verne, Creighton Hale, Monte Blue, and Kate Bruce.
*"Orphans of the Storm is a 1921 American silent drama film by D. W. Griffith set in late-18th-century France, before and during the French Revolution. The last Griffith film to feature both Lillian and Dorothy Gish, it was a commercial failure, following box-office hits such as The Birth of a Nation and Broken Blossoms.
Like his earlier films, Griffith used historical events to comment on contemporary events, in this case the French Revolution to warn about the rise of Bolshevism. The film is about class conflict and a plea for inter-class understanding and against destructive hatred. At one point, in front of the Committee of Public Safety, a main character pleads, "Yes I am an aristocrat, but a friend of the people."
The film is based on the 1874 French play Les Deux Orphelines by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Cormon. The movie uses several visual effects throughout to capture the emotion of its story, using monochromic filters of red, blue, green, yellow and sepia to show feeling with the silent action which is accompanied by music; the movie also uses fade-ins to achieve this effect.
The film was originally released on 14 reels, although a 12-reel abridged version was made available to theaters a few months later. Despite Griffith's reputation at the box office, the film was not a financial success. The New York Times wrote: "As the vivid scenes of the historically colored melodrama flashed one after another on the screen everyone surely felt that Griffith was himself again" but added "The seasoned spectator, no matter how he may let himself go, knows that every delay is a device to heighten the suspense and every advantage given the rescuers is calculated to evoke his cheers (...) whatever he does, he is not surprised when the girl is saved".
In a retrospective review, Pauline Kael described it as an epic spectacle, "a marvellous, expensively produced mixture of melodrama and sentimentality, with duels, kidnappings, the storming of the Bastille, and Lillian Gish being saved from the guillotine." She made the assessment that it was "not one of Griffith's greatest", but it nonetheless contains memorable sequences of "theatrical sublimity"."
*(source: Wikipedia)
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