Watch Silas Marner

Frederick Warde stars as the bent and twisted miser whose life of selfishness is changed by the influence of a child. From the very beginning, Thanhouser had a knack for pictorializing classic plays and novels, especially quaint period stories. The title character, a kindly weaver, is wrongly accused of murder and theft and becomes an embittered miser. Meanwhile, the real villain is blackmailed. The lives of various characters intertwine eventfully with the life of Silas Marner and events over the decades restore his humanity. A rich variety of locations, one of Thanhouser's specialties, is at its best here. Silas' fire-lit cabin interior has dramatically effective special lighting not possible a couple of years earlier. The story suffers from severe truncation in this version (reduced to less than half its original length for a post-Thanhouser re-release) but benefits from Frederick Warde's detailed acting.