Andrew Earle Simpson

The Scarlet Letter (silent film music)

Instrumentation	piano
Duration	100'
Film Date/Studio	1926, MGM
Director/Actors	Victor Sjöström, dir./Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson
Movements	N/A
Premiere	10/16/06, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Performers	Andrew Simpson, pno
Commissioned by	National Gallery of Art
Recording	N/A
Publication	Composer
Performance History	12/07, NGA
mp3 samples	Scarlet Letter main title: Love Theme Hester and Rev. Dimmesdale on the road Death of Dimmesdale Click here to access excerpts from other Simpson silent film performances

Film synopsis and musical notes

A beautiful setting of Hawthorne's novel, this 1926 MGM film, starring Lillian Gish as Hester Prynne and Lars Hanson as the Reverend Dimmesdale, "The Scarlet Letter" proves powerful and moving throughout. 

Whereas in many of Sjöström's films focus on nature as an implacable force, in "The Scarlet Letter," the implacable force is man's intolerance, bigotry, and narrow, inflexible piety.  Hester, a married woman shunned by the community (as was the Girl from the Marsh Croft) for bearing a child out of wedlock to the Rev. Dimmesdale (his identity as father is unknown to his admiring parishoners), nobly refuses to identify her lover to preserve his social standing.  Hester's husband, long thought lost, returns unexpectedly to discover her child, and torments the pair of lovers to the film's end.  Plans to board a ship for Europe on the film's final day are thwarted as Dimmesdale at last publicly announces his sin, and dies in Hester's arms. 

Click here to access mp3 files of the live performance of The Scarlet Letter (National Gallery of Art, Andrew Simpson, piano).