The Awakening of Bess

The Beast in Man

Silent feature film by Olga Preobrazhenskaya and Vladimir Gardin based on Pushkin’s story of the same name. Considered lost. Directorial debut of Olga Preobrazhenskaya.

In their small-minded New England village Liz and her alcoholic father are rejected by the townspeople. When the new minister, Henry Penfield, comes to town he is attracted to Liz. Also arriving on the same train is young artist Arnold Brice. He takes a fancy to the prettiest girl in town, Mildred Holcombe who is the daughter of a deacon of the church. Mildred and Arnold fall in love, but her brother Arthur threatens to kill the artist if he finds them together. Heedless of Arthur's threats, Mildred goes to Arnold's studio, however Liz sees Arthur following and runs to the studio to warn them. Upon Arthur arrival Liz makes it seem it was she having an affair with Arnold. The deacons plan to banish Liz but Henry discovers the truth, resigns and announces his engagement to Liz.

Billie is the "little mother" of the family and cares for the two smaller children. Her father has fallen under the spell of drink. Billie has become hardened by her struggle against the drink demon in her father and treats him with scant consideration.

Agnes Belgradin is in love with a young doctor, Loring Brent. When Agnes' father dies, her mother takes her on a trip abroad. She insists that the young couple separate before they set sail, and promises that if they still love each other after a year they can reunite. But Mrs. Belgradin intercepts all the letters Agnes and Brent write one another, and convinces her daughter to marry a wealthy Australian millionaire.

Reckless heir of an influential San Francisco family, Perry Danton must prove his worth by taking a job with the family lawyer before he is entrusted with the Danton fortune.

An outlaw with a Heart of Gold sacrificing his own life for the happiness of two young people in love.

An Eastern drifter stakes a claim near Boiseville but spends his nights gambling away his gold. Moll, one of the owners of the gambling hall, tries to help him quit the habit. When is neighbor, Peter Gardner teams up with Moll’s partner, Dick Weed, to try and steal the claim, Moll (who is secretly the drifter’s mother) and Gardner’s daughter, Kate, who is in love with the drifter, attempt to stop them. Gardner nearly succeeds in winning the drifter's claim in a card game, but an amnesiac named Crazy Oby suddenly regains his memory, recognizes Gardner as the man who robbed him years ago, and shoots him. Before dying, Gardner confesses that Oby is Kate’s real father. With the villains defeated and the truth revealed, the drifter and Kate find happiness together and prepare for their wedding.

When she is orphaned Lily Upjohn, from the London slums, becomes a chorus girl at the Pandora Theatre. During a performance a scene painter drops some paint near Lily and her screams prompt the show's composer to create a hit song "Mind the Paint Girl," which Lily makes an overnight sensation. She is courted by young officer Nicholas Jeyes and by Lord Francombe. Driving both men to near ruin she promises marriage to both but in the end choses neither.

Mr. Brunelli, a roomer at a boarding house, has caught the eye of Kate, the daughter of the woman who owns the house. Kate knows her mother, who doesn't want her daughter to have anything to do with her tenants, will disapprove of Mr. Brunelli, but she soon discovers that Mr. Brunelli isn't quite who she thinks he is.

Wealthy heiress Clover Dean has three suitors: Duke Boris, promoted by her aunt, Bucky Raine, a wealthy idler sponsored by her uncle, and struggling young doctor William Dunn, who is her own choice. Clover's engagement to the duke is to be announced at a dance, but she rebels before the gathering and refuses to go on with the marriage. Clover leaves hurriedly, a shot is heard and the duke found dead. Bucky Raine, discovered wandering about the garden with a revolver in his hand, is arrested for the crime, but his testimony convicts the doctor as the person who had possession of the gun during the shooting. The doctor and Clover are both arrested for suspicion, but a guilty conscience forces Rita, a former sweetheart of the duke to confess to the crime. Clover then has her own way and marries the doctor.

Chrissey Desselden is the ward of John Warburton and has promised to marry him though she is drawn to the roguish Robert Neyland. When Robert’s caddish behavior becomes too flagrant, she marries John despite still feeling a pull towards the bad boy. Conflicted, she asks her husband for time to sort out her feelings but when she discovers Neyland’s plot to destroy John’s fortune for spite she spurns him and settles into a happy marriage.

Lacking patients, Dr. Sumner sets himself up as a psychologist and opens a sanitarium, becoming quite successful. Virginia Zelva, a clairvoyant who wants to get into what she regards as a racket, signs on as his nurse. Sumner falls in love with Virginia and, after numerous complications, wins her for his bride.

Clean-cut Hugh Carver, a promising freshman, arrives at Sanford College with lofty ideals. His focus on academics and sports is quickly derailed when he falls for popular flapper Cynthia Day and her modern, carefree attitude plus—as the title suggests—her bold red lips. As Hugh is drawn into a world of jazz, late-night parties, and "petting" sessions, his grades suffer. As he struggles to balance the temptations of the era’s rebellious youth culture with his personal integrity and athletic ambitions Hugh must decide if his romance with Cynthia is worth the potential ruin of his future.

Doris Poole, whose parents were theatrical people, was orphaned as a child, and four members of the troupe adopted and raised her. When grown, she has become the leading lady in a San Francisco stock-company. She meets and falls in love with Ted, the millionaire son of a rich widow, but she thinks he is only a tax-cab driver. His mother objects to the romance and looks into Doris' past. She learns that her father had murdered, in a fit of jealousy, her mother, and tells Doris what she has found out. The four actors who had raised her had never told her how she happened to become an orphan. They persuade Ted's mother to send him on a voyage to the Orient in order to get him away from Doris. But they neglected to tell the mother they had also booked passage for Doris on the same ship.

Glenn Higgins and Patsy Jones are a song-and-dance team traveling the vaudeville circuit across the United States, and land in a Kentucky tank-town filled with sharpies and wise-guys , wearing spats and carrying canes, who have reasons for wanting a horse named "Hot Heels, not to win the race he is scheduled to run in. This does not bode well for the vaudevillians as Glenn, acting on a hot tip from a hot vamp, has bet the pair's bankroll on "Hot Heels" to win.

In France during the reign of Louis XVI American naval officer Francis Burnham escapes from a British convict ship. He flees to Paris to see Benjamin Franklin only to find him away. At loose ends he becomes indebted to the Marquis de Tremignon who under threat of imprisonment involves him in an intrigue to compromise the Countess De Villars to force her into marriage. While unwillingly purloining one of her slippers the lady catches him, and they realize he had saved her at one time from highwaymen. After many contretemps, the Marquis is disgraced, and the Countess and Burnham are united.

The lovely and wealthy Gladys Barnes is pursued by many young men though she favors the persistent Earle. Her head is turned when her father tells her a foreign Count has written with the request to marry her. An amateur artist Gladys paints a portrait of the Count from a photo but the young men at the studio first tease her and then decide to play a joke on her and her father. Sending a telegram that he is arriving early they all dress as different versions of the Count and comic complications ensue until Gladys realizes her folly and returns to Earle.

In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.

A young woman with a shady past goes to the tropics, where she winds up marrying a vicious and brutal pearl trader, then falls in love with another man.