The Bells (1918 film)

The Bells
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Directed by	Ernest C. Warde
Written by	Gilson Willets (film scenario) Jack Cunningham (film scenario)
Based on	The Bells by Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
Starring	Frank Keenan Lois Wilson
Production company	Anderson-Brunton Company
Distributed by	Pathé Exchange
Release date	September 15, 1918 (1918-09-15)
Running time	5 reels
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

The Bells is a lost 1918 American silent drama film released by Pathé Exchange and based on the play, The Bells, by Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian. The play had been a favorite vehicle for actor Henry Irving.

This silent version stars Frank Keenan and Lois Wilson. The story was remade in 1926 as The Bells with Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff.

As reported in a film publication, Mathias, the struggling innkeeper in an Alsatian hamlet, murders a wealthy Jew who comes to spend a night at the inn in order to pay off debts and a mortgage.

The murderer is never discovered, but the season passes into local history as the "Polish Jew's winter." Mathias prospers, and years later his daughter becomes engaged to the captain of the gendarmes. Mathias prepares her dowry, and the sight of the gold coins brings again to his tortured conscience the ever-present sound of the sleigh-bells that heralded the approach of the ill-fated Jewish guest. In his sleep he dreams he is on trial and a hypnotist wrings a confession from him. In an ecstasy of fear he expires in the arms of his wife and daughter, the victim of Heaven's justice.

Like many American films of the time, The Bells was subject to cuts by city and state film censorship boards. For example, the Chicago Board of Censors required a cut, in Reel 2, of the two intertitles "The Crossroads, on murder bent" and "The murder in the snow", the theft of money belt, robbing body of money, and the intertitle "Destruction of the body in the lime kiln" and throwing the body into the kiln.