Manslaughter was cited by The Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats as being the first American feature film to show an erotic kiss between two members of the same sex.[3]
The film portrays its main character, Lydia Thorne, as a thrill-seeking, self-entitled, and wild woman who does not have a reputation of thinking before acting. She acts selfishly by dancing with other men in the presence of her husband and not providing help to her maid who is in dire straits due to her son's health.
She is eventually taken to court after she crashes into a motorcycle cop during a high-speed chase. She is then prosecuted by her husband, Daniel O'Bannon, a lawyer, and is imprisoned for manslaughter. After her sentence, Lydia comes out of jail to find her husband has become an alcoholic.
In this scene, Lydia causes the vehicle accident by stopping and the cop runs into her car with his motorcycle.Poster advertisement for the film.Manslaughter lobby card in 1922 with scene of the party
According to Leatrice Joy, in the scenes where she is chasing trains, it was extremely nerve-wracking because she had to drive the car, which had been fitted with a platform to support two cameramen and the director, plus equipment. Their safety depended entirely upon her skills as a motorist.[4] During the shooting of a prison sequence, Joy burned her hand accidentally with soup in a prop cauldron; assistant director Cullen Tate had neglected to inform her that the soup was scalding hot.[4]
Stuntman Leo Noomis broke his pelvis and six of his ribs during a stunt that required him to crash a motorcycle into a car.[5]
Reaction
Historian Kevin Brownlow notes that Joy and Wilson "both give far better performances than the film deserves."[4] Film historian William K. Everson said "it is hard to believe that such a crude and unsubtle film could come from a veteran like De Mille; the amateurish and crudely faked chase scenes that start the film are of less technical slickness than Sennett had been getting ten years earlier. Manslaughter is exactly the kind of picture that the unknowing regard as typical of the silent film - overwrought, pantomimically acted, written in the manner of a Victorian melodrama, the kind of film that invites laughter at it rather than with it."[4]
When a print was screened by Everson for Joy's daughter's birthday, the star of the film attended and saw it for the first time in forty years. According to Brownlow, "Miss Joy thought it hilarious."[4]
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