''Lily of the Alley'' is a 1924 British

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...

drama directed by Henry Edwards, who also starred in the film with his wife

Chrissie White Chrissie White (23 May 1895 – 18 August 1989) was a British film actress of the silent era. She appeared in more than 180 films between 1908 and 1933. White married actor and film director Henry Edwards in 1922, and in the 1920s the two ...

. ''Lily of the Alley'' was filmed in 1922 and given trade showings in early 1923, but its general release to cinemas was delayed until February 1924 due to various problems within the British film industry at the time.

Background

''Lily of the Alley'' was experimental in form, with Edwards attempting the innovation of producing a coherent screen narrative entirely without the use of

intertitles In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...

. The film is regarded as significant in cinema history as the earliest documented feature-length dramatic silent film to be made consisting solely of visual sequences without any titling to explain the action to audiences, pre-dating the next-known example (a 1923 German film called ''Schatten'') by several months. The film's release was greeted with great interest, but contemporary reviews seem to suggest the finished product to have been a praiseworthy attempt rather than an unqualified success, with the subject matter of the ups and downs of a husband/wife relationship lending itself less well to the absence of titles than a more visually driven action or comic storyline would have. ''The Bioscope'' felt that Edwards' self-imposed restriction "leads to some rather far-fetched ways of conveying simple ideas", although ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' considered that the film was still "an intrinsically absorbing drama, coherently presented".

Plot

Only sketchy details of the film's plot appear to survive. Bill (Edwards) and Lily (White) are newly married. Bert works as a tea salesman and is of a naturally cheery disposition. Over time however, worries about the security of his job and income prey on his mind and he frets over not being able to provide for Lily. With his worries heightened by the fear that he is about to go blind, he falls into a deep depression and becomes a shadow of the happy soul he used to be. Lily becomes desperately anxious about him, and one night has a terrible nightmare in which she dreams that he loses first his sight and then his life (either in a fire, or by being robbed and murdered, depending on the source). However things eventually take a turn for the better and the couple welcome their new baby to the family.

Cast

* Henry Edwards as Bill *

as Lily * Frank Stanmore as Alf *

Mary Brough Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

as Widow * Campbell Gullan as Sharkey * Lionel d'Aragon as Dad

Preservation

As a product of Hepworth Picture Plays, it is thought most likely that prints of ''Lily of the Alley'' would have been seized, along with all other film material in the possession of Cecil Hepworth, by administrators called in to wind up the company's affairs when Hepworth was declared bankrupt later in 1924. The film stock was then melted down to release its marketable

silver nitrate Silver nitrate is an inorganic compound with chemical formula . It is a versatile precursor to many other silver compounds, such as those used in photography. It is far less sensitive to light than the halides. It was once called ''lunar causti ...

content and it is presumed that most of the Hepworth company's full-length features of the 1910s and early 1920s were irretrievably lost at this time. No print of ''Lily of the Alley'' is held in the British Film Institute's National Archive, although they do possess a number of screenshots from the film on file. A modicum of hope remains that the film may one day surface unexpectedly (as was the case with Hepworth's 1920 feature '' Helen of Four Gates'', rediscovered in a Canadian archive in 2008 after an absence of almost 90 years) and the film's official status is "missing, believed lost". In view of its historical interest, ''Lily of the Alley'' is listed as one of the BFI's " 75 Most Wanted" missing British feature films.

References

External links