The Film Daily (1918)

isii4:A >AILV Sunday, July 14, 1918 Mechanical "Movie" Poorly Directed Fails Utterly to Register Margery Wilson and Wallace MacDonald in "MARKED CARDS" Triangle DIRECTOR Henri D'Elba AUTHOR .Adela Rogers St. John SCENARIO BY Lanier Bartlett CAMERAMAN Elgin Leslie AS A WHOLE Very mechanical "movie" with slender plot never lifted by players. STORY An attempt at characterization study that flopped with melodramatic finish that failed to stir. DIRECTION Quite evidently amateurish with players doing what they thought effective; failed to give distinctive atmosphere. PHOTOGRAPHY Just ordinary LIGHTINGS A few good but generally too uniform with lighting on faces frequently bad CAMERA WORK Varied from fair to poor STARS Acceptable but failed to impress SUPPORT Fairly good types but did not get over EXTERIORS Acceptable only INTERIORS Rather good but not well handled as to composition and lighting. DETAIL Very convenient but acceptable CHARACTER OF STORY Just "movie" LENGTH OF PRODUCTION About 4,500 feet THIS certainly lacked the spark of inspiration. It is a meheanical comparatively amateurish attempt to present a study of characterization with the murder mystery, court room trial finish that was decidedly suggestive of what used to be considered a good climax of a feature four years ago. Margery Wilson and Wallace MacDonald are well meaning youngsters who can do comparatively good work under careful, intelligent direction. It seemed as if they had no direction whatever in this because their work was certainly mechanical and decidedly "acting". The treatment of most of the situations and the handling of various characters in the scenes indicated quite clearly that the director was not sure just what he was doing and consequently left most of the action to the judgment of the players. The day has gone when the real fans are willing to pay their good money and waste their time seeing ordinary players walk through a routine "movie" of the old, old type. This is certainly nothing else. We opened up with Miss Wilson presented as the daughter of a hodcarrier who had suddenly become wealthy. Wallace MacDonald was the son of society folk and he wanted to marry Margery despite the protests of his mother. After frequent insults of the girl by the mother, any of which should have made the hero enough of a man to have walked out on his family and married the girl if he really loved her, we found MacDonald still drinking and gambling, like a sure enough blueblood bum. Finally by a very strenuous effort in straining circumstances. Miss Wilson was landed in a hotel where she eluded a chaperon from the girls' school and ran into the room of an unknown man, from the window of which she saw one gambler kill another while her hero with his head on the table was so drunk that he could not tell what had happened. Then we had a reel of court-room stuff in which society's son was about to be declared guilty of the murder when Margery rushed in with the announcement that she had seen the crime committed. As an explanation of why she had not spoken sooner, she announced from the stand that she had seen the murder while secretly in a man's room at the hotel. This scandal thought was certainly unnecessary and they finished with the clutch after our weak hero's acquital without ever clearing up the shero's shame. In the cast were Jack Curtis. Harvey Clark. Lillian Langdon, Joe Bennett, Lee Phelps and Rae Godfrey. Better Forget It. You Can't Build Your House With This Sort The Box Office Analysis for the Exhibitor I cannot see any reason why you should play this. The story gets nowhere and never really interests, the players are mechanical and amateurish and the atmosphere is anything but distinctive. You can't figure that the ordinary romance between hero and shero, which frequently got a poor film by, will serve you thusly in this, because the durn hero is such a weak kneed simp that the average fan is going to be mighty cold on him long before the finish. The title "Marked Cards" sounds fairly interesting but has very little to do with the story as screened. You certainly cannot afford to talk about this being the struggle of a hod-carrier's daughter, suddenly wealthy, to establish herself in society, because that is ancient junk. It seems to me that the advisable thing to do is to forget this and if you are in that unfortunate position that you must play these ordinary subjects because you are under contract. I certainly would put on the soft pedal as to any promises of merit in connection with this subject. If your fans are very good natured, they may let you swing this sort of thing by once every so often but it certainly will not win you any friends and if you are building for the future, you had better begin to duck these "movies". I do not believe that the names of the stars will pull you any business, so if you have to play this your only possible angle is to try to develop it as a murder mystery. My hunch would be, however, to play dead and let it ride.