The Greatest Question

Whether there is life after death becomes an almost peripheral issue in this tense story of villainy and retribution. Pious, generous and good, the Hilton's faith is sorely tried when they lose a son during World War I. The younger son (Robert Harron) tries his best to keep the family afloat, and an orphan girl they had taken in (Lillian Gish) hires herself out as a maid to an evil couple, only to be treated as a slave by the wife and to find herself in constant danger from the husband. Things go from bad to worse as Gish recognises her employers as the couple who killed and buried a girl the man had raped, and having accused them of the crime, may well suffer the same fate herself. Harron saves her in the nick of time and realising he loves her, asks her to be his wife. Griffith's masterly intercutting creates real suspense in the climactic scene of Gish's recollection of the crime, the accusation, her flight from the couple and their attempts to reach her in the attic where she has fled.