Marianne (1913)

Young Marianne is a ray of sunshine and works tirelessly in a factory day in and day out. Everyone likes her for her cheerfulness, naturalness, and kindness. One day, the “dark” truth comes out: Marianne is not the genuine proletarian child everyone had always taken her for! Just as she is chosen to lead a strike against the factory owner, Brandes, it turns out that she is actually Brandes’s illegitimate daughter—a fact she herself had never known. Brandes had once impregnated a young woman named Paula, who came from a humble working-class background. The pressure to marry in keeping with his social standing led Brandes to turn away from Paula, who left with their child, Marianne. Later, Paula entrusted Marianne to her relatives and soon afterward took her own life. Now, twenty years later, daughter and father face one another as opponents in a labor dispute. The girl is immediately torn between her sense of proletarian duty and her emotional attachment to her new-found father, especially since she had earlier injured him by throwing a stone. The now elderly Brandes has grown emotionally hardened since his entire family was killed in a car accident. Marianne tries to navigate between the two sides. When she hears that her fellow strikers intend to storm Brandes’s residence, she warns her father. He immediately calls in the military. Nevertheless, some workers manage to break into the building. With a pistol in his hand, Marianne’s fiancé, who is also among the strikers, sees father and daughter in each other’s arms. He misreads the situation and takes Marianne for the old Brandes’s lover. A shot rings out, and Marianne dies. This also brings the strike to an end.