The Godless Girl (1928)

Director

• Cecil B De Mille [Cecil B DeMille]
• Cecil B DeMille

Starring

• Lina Basquette
• Marie Prevost
• George Duryea
• Noah Beery
• Tom Keene

Last On

01:30-03:30 Thu 5th Mar 2009 120m
Film4

Synopsis

Cecil B DeMille's last silent film is a plot-packed melodrama that is laced with the odd inspired image. When the female leader of a high-school atheist society, Lina Basquette, and her male counterpart at the Christian club, George Duryea, come into conflict, their actions lead to a girl's death. The pair are then incarcerated in a reformatory and suffer brutal treatment at the hands of the guards. The clash is highly improbable, but it's key both to landing them in this predicament and to the perennial theme of religious redemption that's a feature of the director's work. The encounters with sadistic warder Noah Beery and soft-centred blonde Marie Prevost are straight out of a penny-dreadful. But away from the sentimental asides on faith, DeMille makes expert use of both a subjective camera and classic visual effects. Some versions also contain primitive dialogue sequences.