The Girl Without a Soul
Viola Dana plays a dual role as two sisters in a rural village, under the direction of her husband, John Collins. The film was added to the Film Registry of the National Film Preservation Board in 2018 and is currently undergoing further restoration by the George Eastman Museum.
Because the image is still a work in progress (though complete and clean) the archive has asked that this current version be made available only to subscribers, so there will be no Movie ticket link. Please subscribe! It will give you access to a great film with a fine score, and also help us to keep our site going.
The Story
John Collins is credited as scenarist as well as director on this film; it was not based on a novel. This means that there is no authoritative text outlining deeper meanings behind what is depicted on the screen – leaving later commentators to provide their own.
The opening vignette presents the differing characters and rivalry of two twin sisters (both beautifully presented by Viola Dana). We first see Priscilla diligently practicing on her violin. The picture then cuts right through a wall to Unity, listening from the kitchen, and we see her encourage her dog to go into the practice room and “play” the piano with his paws (clearly a trick he has been taught), much to Priscilla’s annoyance and Unity’s amusement. Priscilla yells at Unity, who hugs her dog.
As the film continues, and in contemporary reviews, Unity is viewed as underappreciated at home and socially awkward (as a poor rural girl) at a boarding school she attends. However, she has a devoted (and honest) lover, and a well-developed sense of herself, full of mischief and with a sufficiently developed moral compass to recognize the depravity of the villainous fellow artist courting Priscilla.
So it is interesting that the overview paragraph of the film description in the AFI catalog describes Unity as “deeply troubled,” and another modern review of the film by Chris Edwards explores Henry Beaumont’s treatment of (both) his daughters, based on his outsized veneration of musical talent, as emotional abuse. Edwards’ disdain for the rest of the film (outside of the moral transformation of both sisters) reflects differences in cultural and moral expectations between 1917 and today, but the information contained in the images and titles fully sustains both viewpoints.
The next major character is introduced in a moment of lyrical romance. Nicholas Ivor, a Russian violinist residing at an artist colony nearby (played by Fred Jones), inspired by the beauty of the valley below (and possibly hearing a violin being played somewhere down there), brings out the instrument he brought with him and plays a serenade in the open air. Priscilla hears the music from in the house, comes out, and plays an answer to the unseen artist, each playing a song with lyrics (shown on screen) that the other recognizes.
This intimate moment musical is broken, first by Unity coming to the window and their father from his workshop, having heard the impromptu duet, and then when Nicholas loses his footing and falls from his airy perch, damaging his violin. Unity’s first reaction is to laugh at the pratfall (we’ve seen enough 1-reel comedies to know why) but has the grace to be abashed when her father scolds her. Nicholas, however, on being reassured that Mr. Beaumont can repair his violin, realizes he has well and truly fallen on his feet, his courtship already successful in its first few minutes.
Unity has a romance of her own – more prosaic, perhaps, but clearly a road leading to happiness. While running an errand for her sweetheart, blacksmith Hiram Miller (played by Robert Walker), she accidentally discovers his handwritten account statement. He is not only entrusted with the $22.94 already collected for the church organ fund (to which Unity’s errand is to add the $11.01 of today’s latest receipts) but also has personal savings in the amount of $150, collected at a rate of $10 per month and budgeted for her education and furnishing their future home.
She confronts Hiram with the paper, prompting a proposal of marriage, followed quickly by acquiescence from her father to both the wedding and Hiram’s gift of boarding school, though it will take her from home and her duties there – and be, in the event, it’s own trial by fire for a country girl.
The two girls’ dreams for their separate futures come into direct conflict when it develops that Nicholas Ivor is not only less provident than Hiram Miller but also less scrupulous. And Priscilla’s lifelong dedication to her Art leaves her prey to disastrous weakness when Art appears to demand the sacrifice of personal integrity.
The sisters’ commitment to one another is tested, and even Hiram is endangered when he is trapped in a kindly lie. Both girls must rise above themselves and their rivalry to avert tragedy. (And pace Chris Edwards, it is quite satisfying to see Hiram get his own back, from both Ivor and the twins’ father.)
The Movie
I have not delved deeply into source materials; the history below is the takeaway from Dr. Carli’s live intro to the film. Once upon a time there were three sisters, named Edna, Virginia and Leonie Flugrath. They all went into acting at the Edison Studios, and eventually decided they needed to have different names, to prevent the confusion that no doubt arose, as well as in obedience to the tradition of the time. Edna, the eldest, claimed the Flugrath name for her own, and the other sisters let her have it. The youngest sister chose Shirley Mason as her new name, and the middle sister, Virginia, decided to call herself Viola Dana.
In 1915, Viola Dana and John Collins, a rising star director at Edison, went to New Jersey to be married – which Viola could do legally at age 17 in New Jersey, but not in New York – and it is a good thing he was not caught transporting her across state lines. It was as well that they married early; John died in the flu pandemic in October, 1918, at the age of 28, leaving Viola a widow at 21.
By that time they had made 23 feature films together (all but two of the feature length films directed by Collins starred Dana), first at Edison and then, starting in 1916, with B. A. Rolfe at Columbia/Metro. Of these, 6 are known still to exist, and The Girl Without a Soul was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry (of films with “cultural, historic and aesthetic importance to the nation’s film heritage”) in 2018.
Like DeMille, Collins directed films in many genres and a variety of locations in the vicinity of the New York studios he worked for. The Girl Without a Soul was a “rural drama,” and shows a number of themes characteristic of the genre: shots of beautiful natural scenery, the depiction of honest but narrow minded townspeople, Unity’s humiliating encounters with suburban culture and fashion at boarding school, and the race between horse and automobile in the final scene (the horse wins).
When music is used in rural genres it is often to point up cultural differences between rural and urban characters, but in this film its characterization as a powerful but amoral force is an interesting twist – as well as a main spring of the plot.
This is not the only film in which Dana played a dual role: in The Gates of Eden, shot less than a year before, both Dana and Walker each played two people, Dana (at 18!) a mother and her daughter, and Walker a single character, first as a young man and then older. That film does not survive.
The Source
This film comes from the collections of the George Eastman Museum. The Museum’s first Curator of Film, James Card, took a great interest in Collins, helping to rescue his work from the oblivion that followed his untimely death. The museum kindly lent to Dr. Carli a digital access copy to use for a film class in 2018, and have given their permission to use it in our series, provided that we take care to prevent this version being widely disseminated on the internet, since the restoration is not yet complete. We await with interest the final version of this lovely film!