Sadie Thompson

The first of three adaptations of Somerset Maugham's novella (the others were Lewis Milestone's Rain and Curtis Bernhardt's Miss Sadie Thompson), Walsh's late silent movie profited from the absence of dialogue to avoid some of the inevitable censorship problems. Sadie, a prostitute escaping prosecution in San Francisco, lands up on a South Pacific island where she finds a sympathetic sailor lover (played by Walsh himself), but is threatened with deportation by a reformer - a priest in the novella - whose feelings towards her are not entirely spiritual. Walsh's version is high on atmosphere and vitality, though sadly the final reel has been lost, and a restoration has had to resort to stills to reach the conclusion.