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Photograph: Silent Era image collection.
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The Debt
(1912) United States of America
B&W : Two reels
Directed by (unknown)
Cast: Jack Hopkins [Jack Warren], Louise Vale [Zema]
Rex Film Company production; distributed by The Universal Film Company, Incorporated. / Released 21 November 1912. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? Jack Warren, the son of well-to-do parents, has been carrying on a flirtation, and a flirtation which cannot be described as of the harmless sort, with Zema, an octoroon in the employ of his parents. As the story opens, Zema is begging Jack to do that which the ordinary conventions of society demand a man shall do when he has won the affections of a woman, fulfill his obligations, take her to the altar. Zema is on her knees. There is no question as to her love for Jack. But her lover has no intention of publicly acknowledging the love he has so ardently if privately professed. He spurns the woman at his feet. In the first place, actually he is in love with Beatrice Blake, with whom also his brother Paul is in love. Jack goes straight to Beatrice. Zema watches the two as they stroll out into the fields. She sees Jack kiss Beatrice. She realizes then the full significance of the disaster that has come into her life. Paul also has been a close follower of the action of Jack and Beatrice. He goes the way of the wanderer, and he goes a long way from home, off by himself. Zema has not given up hope of winning Jack. In an appeal to him, she exclaims, “God Almighty never intended one law for the white and one for the black.” She throws to the ground the money Jack offers her. Zema has a brother, Jim. His brotherly eye has noted the distress of Zema. He has also wondered at the sudden departure of Paul. He jumps at conclusions. Zema, anxious to shield Jack, tells her brother that Paul is the one guilty. There is a distressing scene. The brother has no knowledge of Paul’s whereabouts. In three months, however, Jim sees Paul enter his home, having been summoned back on account of the illness of his mother. He follows him. Zema is watching the two. Now she is in terror that her brother may do harm to Paul before she can tell him of Paul’s innocence. Zema enters the house. Paul, coming into the same room, discovers Zema kissing Jack’s photograph. “Jack promised to marry me,” she explains to Paul. Zema’s brother, Jim, entering the window from the piazza, draws a pistol. Zema grapples with him, secures the pistol and throws it through the window. In self-abnegation Paul assumes his brother’s guilt. A little later, as Paul is by the window, a note is passed through by an unseen hand. It is from Zema. She tells him she is going away; she cannot bear to have him sacrifice himself for his brother’s debt. The following scene shows Zema going “into the night and nowhere,” a slight figure silhouetted against a sky from which the sun is sinking. A year later, Paul at his cabin in the woods, sees Zema, faint and weary, approaching with a babe in her arms. A dissolving scene shows Jack and Beatrice, happy; there is a baby here also. The flash fades. Paul goes to the aid of Zema. It is a dramatic situation, Toil and trouble have done their work. Zema is buried near the cabin. Paul picks up little Minna, caresses her, closes up his cabin and starts further west. Twenty years later Minna starts east to study music. Paul puts her on the train and kisses her goodbye. On the train Minna is seated in front of a young man who immediately shows his interest in her in the way so well known to travelers. He hands her his card. “Bert Warren” is the name it bears. “Why,” says Minna, “my name is Warren, too.” Their conversation terminates abruptly. They are both thrown to the floor. There has been an accident. We see the cars overturned, the locomotive, broken up, on its side. Bert is dragging Minna through a window of a burning car. Back in the west Paul receives a letter from Minna telling him that she is desperately in love, adding, “We are going to be married. Isn’t it strange? His name is just like ours, Warren, and he has an uncle named Paul.” The two are on their way to Bert’s home. Paul goes out of the house and mounts a horse in haste. He goes to the telegraph office and sends a message. At Jack’s home all is in readiness for a wedding ceremony. The clergyman has arrived. Beatrice is happy in her son’s happiness. As the ceremony is about to begin Jack is handed a telegram. He reads it and collapses. “Stop wedding,” it says. “Minna is the daughter of yourself. She is Bert’s sister. Am coming.” It is signed Paul. To the distressed inquiries of Beatrice, of Bert and of Minna, the broken father, whose sin has found him out after all these years, can only say, “She is my child.” Beatrice puts her arms about Minna and leads her away. Bert upbraids his father. Jack reaches in a drawer, takes out a pistol and goes into an adjoining room. Bert keeps a hand on the knob, but he makes no move to prevent what only too plainly is going to happen. Paul rushes into the room as the pistol is fired. Minna goes out into the night. She, also, is paying the debt. In the window, in the light reflected from the moon, stand mother and son. The son puts his hand in his mother’s. A month later Minna has reached the grave of her mother, out in the forest. We leave her, standing as did her mother many years before, outlined against the sky, and doomed to follow her mother’s weary footsteps.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 30 October 2022.
References: Null-Black p. 9 : Website-IMDb.
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