Lon Chaney in "The Light of Faith" (1922)

A distraught out-of-work wandering young waif, Bessie MacGregor (Hope Hampton), is fleeing a broken romance. She rents a room in a boarding house. The landlady, Mrs. Flaherty (Dorothy Walters), takes her last dollar for rent. Besse tries to find a job. Another boarder, a tough but somewhat kind-hearted small time Italian hood, Tony Pantelli (Lon Chaney), is clearly infatuated with her. After several days of looking for work, Bessie collapses from hunger. Tony carries her back to her room. Mrs. Flaherty and Tony start to nurse Bessie back to health. In a simple way, Tony falls in love with Bessie but hides his affections because he feels she is too good for him. A doctor diagnoses Bessie with a heart problem and tells her to remain in bed as much as possible. American millionaire J. Warburton Ashe (E.K. Lincoln) is filled with misery and regret over his broken romance with Bessie. He has no idea where she is, so he heads off on a trip to England to try to forget about her. During a hunting expedition in the ruins of a monastery, his dog comes across a fancy mysterious chalice half-buried in the ground that the locals believe to be the Holy Grail. Wealthy society woman Mrs. Templeton Orrin (Teresa Maxwell-Conover) urges her brother to return to New York to find Bessie, and Ashe brings the Holy Grail back with him. Meanwhile back at the boarding house, Bessie has become delirious. Tony brings her a newspaper where she learns that Ashe has returned and has The Holy Grail. After Bessie tells Tony the legend of the Holy Grail, and its magical powers, he goes to Ashe's mansion and takes the cup while assaulting Ashe in the process. Tony brings the cup to Besse. She touches the glowing cup, it works its magic, and she makes an instant recovery, but the lovely lady is still sad, as she and the owner of the cup have a romantic history together. Tony is arrested and prosecuted for assault and theft. The trial builds to a moving and visually stunning climax. Bessie and her old boyfriend are reunited, and when Ashe has a religious conversion upon seeing the cup glow in the courtroom, he is touched by Tony's friendship with Besse and decides the best course is to lie. As a result, Ashe refuses to press charges against the thief with a good soul, who is then acquitted and released from custody. And everyone lives happily ever after...except Tony watches Bessie and Ashe embracing. Tony saved Bessie's life and reunited the two lovers, but at the end of the film, he walks out of the courthouse heartbroken and left all alone to lament his lost love. A 1922 three-reel American silent religious/love story drama film (re-edited from a longer version called "The Light in the Dark"), directed by Clarence Brown, screenplay by William Dudley Pelley and Clarence Brown, from a story by William Dudley Pelley, and starring Lon Chaney, Hope Hampton, Dorothy Walters, and E. K. Lincoln. Filmed in New York City and at the Paragon studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and released by Associated First National Pictures. The only film produced by Hope Hampton, star of "The Gold Diggers" (1923), and a celebrity fashion model, who delivered a faultless, softly shaded study of the harried heroine. The world premiere was held at the Strand Theatre in Niagara Falls, NY. This simple tale of a rough petty criminal, played with great delicacy by the genius actor Lon Chaney (and his hopeless quest for the love for the heroine, a recurring theme in his films), was praised for its art direction and the sheer beauty of the lighting and cinematography at the time of its release. Sunlight in the heroine's hair, the glow of the holy grail and its reflection on faces, even the light of God are all are realized with great artistic care, foreshadowing Brown's later work, especially with Garbo. Some scenes (mostly showing the Holy Grail glowing) were filmed in Color. The color scenes depicting the story of the Holy Grail were produced from the paintings of Edwin Austin Abbey. This is the first feature film to employ the new two-strip color process. "In introducing the new process of color photography, Associated First National has made doubly secure an offering that from the standpoint of material and treatment promises to give wide satisfaction ... It has a penetrating theme and a symbolic beauty...Lon Chaney has the type of role in which he has proven exceptionally skillful. His is a real sympathetic contribution." - Moving Picture World A Rhode Island film distributor specializing in religious subjects acquired the original 63-minute feature film, "The Light in the Dark," in the mid-20's, re-edited it into this condensed 33-minute version, retitled it "The Light of Faith," which emphasized the subplot involving the Holy Grail, and circulated to schools and churches in the 1920s. State law required that films for schools and churches (the major market for that distributor) be printed on nonflammable safety stock, so this multi-tinted version exists today.