Sadie Thompson (1928)

Good-time gal from San Francisco gets stuck in Pago Pago due to a smallpox quarantine on her connecting ship, but there’re some marines stationed there to keep her company and a hellfire missionary to keep her from having any fun.

I rarely like silent films and I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this is an exception really, but it kind of worked. Even with the the final ten minutes being mostly stills and reworked dialogue cards due to damage to the original film, there is some real power here.

B-