The film represents a "literalization" of Hawthorne's romance. Romance, for Hawthorne, occurs in shadows, so we cannot quite know what is real and what we imagine. Is Dimmesdale's scarlet letter real or psychological? In the film it is very real, carved into his chest, and the quick juxtaposition of his letter with Hester's is powerful, as, at last, they stand on the scaffold together. Great scenes include the one that culminates in Pearl's baptism, beautifully developed and based on the love of Hester and Dimmesdale and on the witnesses' belief that Dimmesdale acts out of piety, as opposed to some mingling of love and guilt. And the cross-cutting between Hester on the scaffold and an agonized Dimmesdale on the platform of judgment is superb. Gish conveys powerful emotions with subtle shifts in her expression, and Dimmesdale's pain is magnified by its being understood in one way by Hester and in quite another by the censorious crowd. A comic and non-Hawthornian subplot involves the revenge wrought by Giles against the gossip who has caused much of the trouble. She is dunked in the village's water supply. The film moves, as does the novel, with a deterministic inevitability. Gish's vulnerable Hester is at the heart of the story. We know that things will not go well for her when her bird has the temerity to sing on the Sabbath. And, of course, it escapes from its cage. Hester will not escape from hers.We may disapprove of the nasty Calvinists who make up the population of Hester's village, but they remain among us, all too many of them, today. By the way, the winter scenes are wonderful. How did they do the snow?
Review of The Scarlet Letter
