FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

64 Transition and Transformation
with her and proposes to her, but it turns out that she is already married to an
older man who has never made it to America. When Dimmesdale returns from
a long journey, he discovers that Hester has given birth to their child but has
refused to disclose the father’s identity. He arrives only to see her being publicly
punished for her adultery on the scaffold, being doomed to carry forever the
letter A for “adultery” on her clothing. Later her husband appears and realizes
what is going on. After many years, she wants to flee together with her beloved,
but the husband, who has sworn to get his revenge, has found out their plans
and tells her that he will leave on the same ship. After his sermon on Election
Day, after which they were supposed to leave, Dimmesdale publicly confesses
his paternity and reveals a letter A that he has branded on his chest. He dies in
Hester’s arms of the self-inflicted injury.
Fig. 9: On the set with four cameras (The Scarlet Letter).
In the following, in dialogue with earlier readings, which have emphasized the
aspect of “the spectacle” as well as “the aesthetics of light” of the film, I will try
to develop further my own close reading of the novel and its visual dimensions,
in relation to the stylistic devices developed by Sjöström, both on the representational
level and as concerns the film’s stylistic devices, perhaps most notably