Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Manslaughter (1922)

The bad suffer. The good suffer. But in the end, in the moralist sermons of Cecil B. DeMille, all is sacrifice and happiness. For who else in the silent era could have constructed such a stern moral universe than DeMille? Contrasting wanton dissipation against the rigid adherance to law, DeMille manipulates his characters like an autocratic puppetmaster, driving his dime-store philosophy home with a sledgehammer.

DeMille wanted his audience to be satisfied with their working-class lives as they were and targeted the backbone of America. He knew that the mass of Americans were simple folk and thought they were sheep to be led. Simple, unsubtle edicts are passed off to his viewers to make them feel humble and subservient. Yes, yes. Isn’t it terrible that those mad people over there are having so much fun when you’re over here suffering in the name of humility? Don’t they see what we see? That their way is the road of decadence that leads to destruction? Suffer on, my lambs, for your reward for it will come . . . like a check in the mail. Yes, my flock, the check is in the mail! And you will cash yours soon enough. Not at all like those people over there who are living on bad credit.

What is so egregious about this posturing of DeMille’s is that one senses that he is ultimately false to this attitude, that DeMille was only giving audiences what he thought they wanted out of a motion picture while touting himself as an important filmmaker in the guise of social commentator. Without peeling off too many onion-skin layers, it can be seen that DeMille feeds his audience a diet of upper-class corruption and unhappiness to hopefully discourage them from aspiring to rise above their station in life. Without reading too much into his films, DeMille appears to be posing the unspoken question, ‘You don’t want to be one of these people, do you?’ And DeMille is at his worst when he takes this social stance.

With Manslaughter (1922), Cecil B. DeMille made just this kind of social-themed statement. As he would in The Ten Commandments (1923), these social pronouncements are emphasized with historical comparisons to attempt to give his insights some validity. DeMille titillates audiences with epic views of Roman debauchery then suddenly slams the history book shut loudly to dispense a moral imperative to a guilt-ridden viewer. ‘Tonight’s entertainment cannot be taken in sweetness,’ says our lord DeMille, ‘it must be taken with a hefty dose of acrid reality!’ The residual taste is lingeringly metallic. ‘Life is a struggle,’ he says, ‘suffer it and endure its hardships in happiness!’

But is this good cinema? Is a message of self-sacrifice and social service more important when it is delivered with storm und drang? We ask the ghost of Moses DeMille, ‘Does the message really have to be etched in stone by lightning to be enlightening?’ We say, no. And we wish that Cecil B. DeMille, one of the 20th century’s most-recognized filmmakers, had been capable of reinforcing these simple and desirable social qualities without the stern and short-sighted blustering of a diminutive schoolmaster with an inferiority complex.

The judgmental and posteringly moralistic voice of Cecil B. DeMille speaks clearly through Manslaughter’s lengthy intertitles. From the first intertitle, which begins, “Unfortunately for Lydia Thorne, she has everything in the world she wants except a Mother and Father,” DeMille positions himself to make his street-corner pronouncements. Lydia (Leatrice Joy) is a devil-may-care party girl who is loved by the letter-of-the-law district attorney Dan O’Bannon (Thomas Meighan). When Lydia’s carelessness results in the death of a police officer, O’Bannon sets aside his feelings and makes certain that Lydia is sent to prison. His job done, he resigns his position. In prison Lydia learns the value of humility and service to others. Wracked with guilt, O’Bannon slips into alcoholism. Released from prison, Lydia encounters O’Bannon on the dole. He cleans up, wins Lydia’s heart, and runs for governor. His pending successful election is derailed by Lydia’s criminal past, and O’Bannon gives up his political bid to be with the woman he loves.

— Carl Bennett