Ashes of Vengeance

A historical drama directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Norma Talmadge, set in 16th-century France during the wars of religion between Catholics and Huguenots. When Catherine de' Medici orders the massacre of French Protestants, the Comte de la Roche spares his enemy, the Huguenot Rupert de Vrieac, by reducing him to an indentured servant in his castle. Rupert falls in love with Yolande, the count's sister, only to find his rival for her hand is the Duc de Tours, a notorious persecutor of Huguenots. Produced by the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation and presented by Joseph M. Schenck, the film was an expensive prestige production with lavish 16th-century costumes and a reproduction of the Louvre ballroom. As a work published before 1930, the film is in the public domain in the United States.