The Scarlet Letter (1926 film)
The Scarlet Letter is a 1926 American silent drama film based on the 1850 novel of the same name by Nathaniel Hawthorne and directed by Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjöström. Prints of the film survive in the MGM/United Artists film archives and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The film is now considered the best film adaptation of Hawthorne's novel.
Lobby card
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A'. Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin and guilt.
Title page, first edition, 1850
The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle (1861). Hester Prynne and Pearl in the foreground, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth in background.
She beheld the minister advancing, illustrated by Hugh Thomson from a 1920 edition
Hester Prynne at the pillory, an engraved illustration from an 1878 edition