Stronger Than Death is a 1920 American silent romance-drama film
directed by Herbert Blaché and produced by and starring Alla Nazimova.
It was distributed by Metro Pictures.
...Major Tristam Boucicault
(Bryant) endeavors to get his father Colonel Boucicault (French) to aid
him in fighting the cholera in the distant city of Bjura, where he is
the lone physician fighting the disease. The colonel refuses and the
son, angered, leaves in an ugly mood. His attention is arrested by Sigrid
Fersen (Nazimova), who is being entertained by the officers and their
wives. She promises to aid him and follows the major to Bjura. She
raises a large sum at a bazaar. Here she refuses the hand of James
Barclay (Prior), a wealthy half-breed that the elite have refused to
recognize socially.
Sigrid overhears a conversation between James and
the high priest of a temple during which it is disclosed that the
colonel is in reality James' father. James is planning the ruin of
Colonel Boucicault. In an altercation between the colonel and major,
Tristam strikes his father down. James sees the fight and under penalty
of disclosing the facts forces Sigrid to marry him that night. At the
wedding dinner, Colonel Boucicault denounces James for attempting to
incite a mutiny in the camp, and James swears vengeance upon him as his
father. Sigrid is urged to go to the temple and dance for the natives to
keep them from joining the mutiny, while the major goes to collect the
colonel's troops and surround the temple. James shoots the high priest
as he is about to plunge a dagger into Sigrid, and the natives fall upon
James and kill him. Major Boucicault takes the exhausted dancer to his
hut where she recovers consciousness and determines to live for the love
that is stronger than death.
