"Twilight of a Woman's Soul", a 1913 Russian silent film by the director Evgeni Bauer. It clocks in at just under 49 minutes.

The subject matter for such an early film is surprising.

!!! SPOILERS !!! (Should one even put such a warning for a film released more than 100 years ago?)

A young woman (Nina Chernova, as Vera), under the wing of her wealthy mother, holds charity events for the poor. She also visits them in their tenements and distributes food to them. Returning to one such hovel after its male occupant writes her a letter asking for help, she is taken captive by the occupant and raped.

Vera kills her captor and escapes, and tells her betrothed-- a Prince --what happened. He divorces and abandons her. Vera starts a new life as a famous theater actress, and later, her Prince begs her forgiveness and asks her to return to him. She refuses. The Prince is heartbroken. The film ends.

Pretty dark stuff.

From a technical standpoint, the director is very competent. The film speed looks more or less "normal" to modern eyes-- not much of that "herky-jerky" movement of the actors that some early films suffer from (this may be more the case with early comedies, rather than dramatic films such as this one).

In modern film studies, I've heard it said that the "action" in a film should occur, as a general rule, about 20 minutes in . . . and here we have Evgeni Bauer, way back in 1913, showing the scene of violence against Vera at about 19:50.

As far as esthetics, the historically-minded viewer should find the scenery of urban, pre-Communist, Tsarist Russia interesting. There is a lot of attention paid to an automobile used in this film, an invention not at all common in Russia back in this time period.

Overall, an interesting little film, if a bit slow at times.