Lorna Doone

Maurice Tourneur's atmospheric adaptation of R.D. Blackmore's 1869 novel, set in 17th-century Exmoor, England. Madge Bellamy stars as Lorna Doone, a young woman raised by a clan of outlaw Doones who falls in love with John Ridd (John Bowers), a farmer's son whose father was murdered by the Doones. Tourneur, one of the great visual poets of silent cinema, brought a painterly sensibility to the moors and the romance, creating one of the most admired literary adaptations of the era. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain in the United States.