Wenn Tote sprechen (1917)

Leonore von Radowitz is a beautiful noblewoman, adored and worshipped by her husband, Edgar. So the pain is all the greater when, one day, a servant rushes into the room and announces that he has found Leonore dead in her bedroom. In the time that follows, Leonore’s sister, Maria von Brion, who looks exactly like the dead woman, becomes an emotional support to Edgar, even though he cannot come to terms with his wife’s death. Like a man possessed, he tries to understand her death, repeatedly poring over the love letters found in the deceased woman’s hand. When the very revolver that ended Leonore’s life is found in Edgar’s desk, Maria begins to suspect that Edgar may have murdered his wife. She reports him, and the police arrest Edgar. Before he disappears behind bars, Edgar entrusts the letters to the old house servant for safekeeping, instructing him that no one must read them. As a loyal servant, the man knows what to do and buries the letters in the estate’s park. Maria now often visits her dead sister’s grave, and each time she is surprised to find fresh flowers on it. The one who makes the pilgrimage to the grave day after day is a dark-eyed young man of ascetic appearance. One day, when he and Maria meet there, he is utterly shocked to see her, for she resembles the dead woman exactly. This man is called Richard Worth, and from the moment they first met, he has felt magically drawn to Maria, in whom he evidently sees a kind of reincarnation of Leonore. He does not give up trying to win her favor, even after Maria makes it clear that she has always loved Edgar and found it hard to get over him choosing Leonore as his wife. The day Edgar von Radowitz’s trial begins has arrived. Everything in the proceedings points against him, and since the accused says nothing about the whole affair, things look bad for him. At last, the old servant is called to testify. After his testimony, a masked man approaches him and promises to hand over a document that could prove Edgar’s innocence beyond doubt, if the servant will in return give him—the stranger—the buried letters. Heavy-hearted, the servant agrees to this bargain and hurries back to court with the document he has received. The document is nothing other than a letter the deceased woman had written to the stranger, in which she announced her own suicide. Edgar is acquitted, but he would rather have remained behind bars than have to live in public with the “disgrace” that his wife had first taken a lover and then killed herself as well. In a fury, he searches for the man he regards as the destroyer of his marital happiness. He still has no idea that this man is Richard Worth, who is currently making great efforts to win Maria. Edgar searches everywhere except where he might actually find him. And so Worth has a clear path to finally getting Maria to promise to marry him. Richard wants to put his past with Leonore behind him and throws the letters he received from the servant into the fire. But Maria manages to save a few half-charred copies and devours their contents. Now she knows the whole story. Edgar returns, and Maria tells him that the man he has been searching for all this time is Richard Worth. Enraged, the cuckolded widower wants to throw himself at his former rival, but Maria intervenes. Before Richard’s eyes, she asks Edgar to let her make amends to him, the widower, for all that his former, unfaithful wife destroyed through her adultery. Nothing now stands in the way of a marriage between Edgar and Maria.