Shadows is a dramatic 1922 silent film starring Lon Chaney, Marguerite De La Motte, Harrison Ford and John Sainpolis.

[1] The following year, as Chaney was preparing to star in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he suggested Marguerite De La Motte for the role of Esmeralda, but the part went to Patsy Ruth Miller instead.

Being Chinese and refusing to take part in a Christian service held on the beach for those lost, he is treated like an outcast and forced to live on a small houseboat moored in the harbor.

Snow concocts a blackmail scheme, writing an anonymous letter to the married couple, claiming to be Sympathy's lost husband Daniel and demanding payment to keep quiet.

Snow does not get to enjoy the benefits of his deception however, as Yen Sin exposes the blackmail plot in order to vindicate the young couple, revealing everything he knows from his deathbed.

"[6] "Lon Chaney as 'the Heathen' assumes a role that tempts overacting; but he subdues this temptation to the extent that this Chinaman grips you with a human chain that is unbreakable.

This role clinches the claim of friends of Chaney that he is the greatest character man on the screen, for his is as fine an example of realistic acting and makeup as this writer has seen reflected on the silver sheet."

---Moving Picture World "A decidedly grim and morbid tale, directed and presented without any lighter relieving moments...Lon Chaney as the Chinaman gave a corking performance and successfully withstood the strain of dying through about 2,000 feet of film."

---Variety "It is excellently done in the main and tells a powerful story of how a Chinaman in his bland, naive, simple way proves a better Christian than either the minister of the gospel or the deacon of the church...Lon Chaney gives probably the most superior performance of his long and important career."