The First Degree

Frank Mayo stars as tortured, good-hearted Sam Purdy, a sheep farmer ruthlessly blackmailed by his jealous half-brother Will (Philo McCullough). Largely told through flashbacks, director Edward Sedgwick ratchets up the tension between the two brothers until it explodes in a dramatic courtroom confession of murder. Like most feature films made during the silent era, ‘The First Degree’ was presumed forever lost — until a print was discovered in the collections of the Chicago Film Archives. The scan of ‘The First Degree’ was made from a partially tinted 35mm nitrate distribution print from 1923. Long thought to be a ‘lost film’, the print was rediscovered at Chicago Film Archives (CFA) by Olivia Babler in 2020. Babler scanned the film in-house on CFA’s 4K Kinetta archival scanner. The print is missing 535 feet but is otherwise complete. The score was composed by Chicago rock band Quasar Wut-Wut in 2021.