The Witch

The Witch is a lost 1916 American silent drama film directed by Frank Powell, produced by Fox Film Corporation, and starring Nance O'Neil, Alfred Hickman, and Frank Russell. Based on the 1903 play La Sorcière (The Sorceress) by French dramatist Victorien Sardou, this adaptation portrayed the challenges facing a young woman living in a territory in Mexico wracked by military and social unrest. It was filmed at Fox's studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where a Mexican village was constructed on the company's backlot and used as the principal set for outdoor scenes. The Library of Congress includes the film among the National Film Preservation Board's updated 2019 list of "7,200 Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films" produced between 1912 and 1929. Plot With its storyline set in early twentieth-century Mexico, this lost film portrayed the plight of Zora Fernandez (Nance O'Neil), a beautiful and exotic woman who becomes entangled in a love affair and is persecuted by local officials following an armed uprising. Her father, Dr. Fernandez (Frank Russell), is a physician and also a general who leads an insurrection against General Mendoza (Alfred Hickman), the military governor of the surrounding territory. The doctor and his forces are defeated, and he dies in battle. The victorious Mendoza now resents Zora for her past indifference to his romantic advances and suspects she may try to oppose his authority as well. The governor is concerned too about Zora's reputation as a sorceress, most notably for her abilities to cast spells and concoct miraculous potions. In reality, her father, as a medical doctor, had taught her hypnosis and how to treat various illnesses. Those abilities, however, are viewed by most of the residents in her village as supernatural and forms of witchcraft. To isolate the "witch", Governor Mendoza forces Zora to leave her village and then issues a proclamation warning citizens that any women who associate with her will be imprisoned for life; men who do so will be immediately hung. Zora, despite being ostracized, continues to help the rural poor and sick by dispensing herbal medicines and using her "magical mental power". When Mendoza's daughter Dolores (Jane Miller) begins to suffer from being "addicted to walking in her sleep", her attending nurse secretly sends for the witch to come cure her. Zora slips into the governor's palace with the help of the nurse and then uses her "mastery of hypnosis" to cure the young woman.