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THE ART OF SOUND PICTURES
cannot take care of herself. She has no money and no way of self-support. In spite of her tragedy, the pull of life is too strong for her to commit suicide. So, in desperation, she rushes home just in time to dress for a dinner party planned for that evening. As she comes down to greet the guests, she is overwhelmed to have her husband introduce to her the doctor who had brought in her dead lover only a few minutes before. He has been telling of the recent tragedy.
The plot resolves itself around the possibility of her going through the evening, unsuspected by a jealous husband, with the only witness to the tragedy a dinner guest in her home.
Here is a perfect situation, managed by thinking and subsequent action, in which both foresight and selfcontrol are deeply involved. Every event in the story both determines and is determined by its central character. The only coincidence — the chance passing of the doctor at the time of the tragic accident — gives rise to the story action, and is also entirely plausible. The solution shows the audience just what sort of character the heroine is. You will do well to study the picture with great care for its plot technique in a play adapted to a talking movie.
Admirable as this adaptation is, however, the picture as a whole cannot be recommended as perfect screen copy. Rather do we praise it as an almost perfect rendering of the dramatic values that were present in Barrie’s original stage play. The story lacks pictorial qualities. It is somewhat too bald and bare. The camera man has too little to do here. Do not let this limitation, however, confuse your judgment of its merits.