De Mille describes The Whispering Chorus as "one of the first...of the films that have come to be called 'psychological.' The conflict in it is in the souls of the characters.... It is the story of a man condemned to death for his own murder. To escape the consequences of thefts from the office where he works, John Tremble...runs away, finds a corpse in a river, mutilates it to make it unidentifiable, puts his clothes on it...and years later...is arrested and convicted of murdering John Tremble." (The Autobiography of Cecil B. De Mille, Donald Hayne, Ed.) "De Mille's first two films in 1918 (The Whispering Chorus and Old Wives for New) may well represent a kind of artistic zenith for him. The Whispering Chorus is certainly one of his most powerful and visually interesting films.... Oddly enough, the critics-though much impressed by its power-were not overly-impressed with the technical expertise, referring to 'the usual tricks of double exposure,' indicating that there must have been quite a lot of such work which has long been unseen and forgotten." (William K. Everson)