Mist in the Valley (1923) Online

Stirring melodrama from Cecil Hepworth features a courtroom battle and uses the English countryside less than other Hepworth films like TANSY, HELEN OF FOUR GATES, and COMIN' THRO' THE RYE, but is a solid film nonetheless.

G.H. Mulcaster plays Denis Marlow, man who has lost his money and fiancée. He's about to jump off a bridge when a stranger talks him out of it. He hops a train and wakes to find himself in Devon, a stranger in a new land. While walking the countryside he comes upon a sleeping woman (Alma Taylor) who has a secret. He calls her Heather Moreland and they soon marry.

Time passes and we learn through several flashbacks, that "Heather" is really Margaret Yeoland and is wanted by the police for the murder of her father. Raised in a convent, she finally went home to meet her father and creepy cousin (James Carew) but learned a terrible secret and fled to wander the moors.

After she confesses her true identity to her husband, he finds a newspaper with headlines about the search for Margaret Yeoland. She's soon arrested and tried for murder. Her cousin has conveniently dispatched a servant to Torquay to visit a dying daughter and has been sworn to secrecy by the cousin. But during the trial, the truth and the woman's secret are revealed.

Alma Taylor was Hepworth's biggest star and appears in all his feature films (at least the four that survive). It's easy to see why she was England's biggest silent film star. Mulcaster and Carew are excellent. Other Hepworth regulars also appear: Gwynne Herbert as Mrs. Grick, John MacAndrews as the servant Pennyquick, and Charles Vane as the father.

Alma skips out of boarding school, expecting to come home to a lonely but doting father. In fact she finds him rather cold, and there's a cousin knocking around who she doesn't like the look of.

Meanwhile in London, our hero has lost his girl and his cash and is destitute. He tries to throw himself into the Thames, but is disuaded by a Sally Army chick with a faraway look in her eyes. He hops in an empty freight truck to sleep the night and wakes up in Devon.

Soon afterwards he finds Alma asleep on the moor having run away Adela Quested-style from a traumatic incident which she can't remember. They marry. Lots of great cottage-window and garden-gate scenes with Geraniums much in evidence. Very Hepworth. BUT it turns out Alma's dad was killed the night she ran away, and she is the chief suspect in the ensuing tension-filled courtroom ending - lots of racing off to get vital witnesses to testify, and a jolly good unexpected twist at the end.

This is classic Hepworth, much enjoyed by this fan.