The Godless Girl


The Godless Girl

Title Cue
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Produced by Cecil B. DeMille
Written by Beulah Marie Dix
Jeanie MacPherson
Starring Lina Basquette
Cinematography J. Peverell Marley
Editing by Anne Bauchens
Distributed by Pathe Exchange
Release date(s) 31 March 1929
Running time 113 minutes
Country  United States
Language Silent
English intertitles

The Godless Girl (1929) is a film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, shown for years as his last completely silent film. However, the UCLA Film and Television Archive restored the film's dialogue scenes that were added during the transition of films from the silent era to the sound era, thereby restoring a film that was one of DeMille's first part-sound efforts. The title character is based on Queen Silver, a child prodigy and socialist orator.[1] The lead actress, Lina Basquette, named her autobiography after the film --Lina: DeMille's Godless Girl.

Contents

Plot

This drama features a romance between an atheist girl, and the male head of a Christian youth organization. The two are at odds when they are thrown into a reform school, but fall in love. The film ends with a fire that breaks out in the school; after the girl is rescued there is an epilogue in which she and the boy seem to agree that there is room for both of their views.

The film was very popular in the U.S.S.R. and in Germany, though it was a box office disaster in the US. When released in August 1928 in its silent film version, it was not a success. DeMille attributed the film’s failure to its already outmoded position in the transition from silent to sound cinema. Nor did it recover more than two-third of its production costs when released in a so-called "goat gland" version with the addition of a final talkie reel in 1929.

In 2007, a version was released by Photoplay Productions and George Eastman House, in association with the Cecil B. deMille Foundation and Film4, restored from deMille's own nitrate print, with a new music score by Carl Davis.

Cast

References

  1. ^ “Queen Silver: The Godless Girl” by Wendy McElroy, Prometheus Books

External links



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