Judith of Bethulia

Judith (Blanche Sweet) is a widow in Bethulia, a Jewish city whose people are starving behind walls the Assyrians have cut off from the world. Her neighbors are frightened enough to give up their homes, so she poses as a harem worker to get into the enemy camp and the tent of the general Holofernes (Henry B. Walthall). D. W. Griffith made this in 1914, the earliest American epic, with the city's gate shut and the besieging army outside.