The Witch (1916)

Wissenswertes

The Witch is a lost 1916 American silent drama film directed by Frank Powell, produced by Fox Film Corporation, and starring Nance O'Neil, Alfred Hickman, and Frank Russell. Based on the 1903 play La Sorcière by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, this adaptation portrayed the challenges facing a young woman living in a territory in Mexico wracked by military and social unrest. It was filmed at Fox's studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where a Mexican village was constructed on the company's backlot and used as the principal set for outdoor scenes.

Production

The film's 1916 copyright registration (LP7713) confirms that director and "scenarist" Frank Powell based his script on Victorien Sardou's play La Sorcière, which had premiered in Paris at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt on December 15, 1903. The original plot of Sardou's play, as presented in Paris, was set in sixteenth-century Toledo, Spain, with the sorceress "Zorraya" portrayed as being of Moorish ancestry.

Powell's casting of Nance O'Neil in the title role was viewed by the media and by film studios as a wise and somewhat expected choice given O'Neil's acting reputation as "America's Sarah Bernhardt" and her previous experience portraying Zorraya in stage productions of La Sorcière.

Stuart Holmes was one of many cast members in The Witch whose role is not clearly identified in published production updates or in reviews. The March 6, 1916 issue of the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky does at least provide some information about the scope of Holmes' part.

For his film's battle sequences, crowd scenes, and to populate the production's large Mexican-village set, Powell hired and costumed hundreds of extras or "supernumones". The director promised to pay each of them "a sandwich at noon and a dollar at night" ($1 then now worth $32) for a day's work at Fox's studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Other than a week to ten days filming in and around Gilboa, NY (June 16-26, 1915), the entire production was filmed in Fort Lee at Fox's facilities located near the intersection of Main Street and Linwood Avenue. Rather than going on location, traveling from New Jersey to Mexico with a large company of actors, crew, and other support personnel, Powell in the early months of 1915 had decided to send his scenic designer, J.

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