Lisette’s peasant mother loved the fleur-de-lis so much that when her daughter was born, she had a birthmark in the shape of the flower. When Lisette grew up, her love for the flower became as obsessive as her mother’s. She forsakes her true love, Antoine, for worldly pleasures as the wife of the Duke of Safoulrug. Their marriage is an unhappy one, ending with the duke’s suicide after finding his wife in the arms of the king. Lisette becomes the king’s mistress… This brief fragment, from a private collection in England, shows the only surviving shot of Lon Chaney dancing – something at which he excelled, although the dance here is prosaic. Joseph de Grasse, made sixty films with Chaney. A decade later, Bess Meredyth was the scenarist of Ben-Hur (1925).

Kevin Brownlow