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The Dumb Girl of Portici has been long overdue for recognition as one of pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber's finest creations and a landmark in women's cinema. The blockbuster film was Universal's most expensive to date and featured an enormous cast, large-scale sets, and an ambitious story. For Weber, The Dumb Girl of Portici represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with the incomparable prima ballerina, Anna Pavlova. Pavlova was appearing with the Boston Opera Company in D. F. E. Auber's 1829 La Muette de Portici, portraying Fenella, a wordless fisher-girl living during the Spanish occupation of Naples in the mid-17th century, who is seduced and abandoned by a Spanish nobleman. In the opera and in Weber's stirring drama, the betrayal of Fenella and the oppression of her people inspire her brother to foment a revolution. Sadly, over the years The Dumb Girl of Portici has fallen out of distribution. This restoration, with a dazzling new score by the acclaimed composer John Sweeney offers audiences a chance to experience the energy, brilliance, and the talents of maestras Pavlova and Weber. Director Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley Cast Anna Pavlova, Rupert Julian, Douglas Gerrard, Betty Schade Production Universal Film Manufacturing Company's Bluebird Photoplays Producers Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley Screenplay Lois Weber, based on the Daniel Auber's opera "La Muette De Portici." Photography Dal Clawson, Allen G. Siegler, R.W. Walter. Restoration by the Library of Congress (George Willeman and Valerie Cervantes), An Affair with Film (Lori Raskin with tinting supervised by PHI's Jere Guldin) and Milestone. Music score by John Sweeney after "La Muette de Portici" by D. F. E. Auber.