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354
School Department
The Educational Screen
The thin line of civilization threading its way westward.
The Covered Wagon {13 reels)
ONE of the screen's greatest achievements to date. It is drama with genuine epic quality. Not so much a play of individual characters as it is the struggle of man against fearful odds which Nature puts in his path — a struggle against desert and cold, aginst the barriers of mountain and rushing stream, against wild animals and savages as untamed, against hunger and uncertainty. It is the stirring record of pioneering of all time.
The story woven into the picture is all well enough, but the real center of interest is that long winding train of wagons making its toil
Youthful minstrel of the expedition.
some way from the plains of the Mississippi to the little known lands of the great West. Within that train as it toils onward, life takes its steady course relentlessly, with its struggles, its loves and hates, births and deaths, dissentions and losses.
There are some fine dramatic moments — the start at the given signal, the pioneers with faces set steadfastly toward the goal thousands of miles distant; the fording of the great stream; the fight against the prairie fire and the Indian attacks; and, not least of all, the silent prayer at the last, those simple heroes of that journey on their knees in the Oregon snow of midwinter.
And there are classic characters — the old trader and the guide perhaps pre-eminent. Some good comedy varies the action, although it is to be regretted (as far as the possible future non-theatrical showings are concerned) that the episode of the liquor is relied upon for so much of the comedy action. A fault which, fortunately, a judicious use of the scissors will modify, while in no sense need it rob the characters of their picturesque qualities. There is also a little subtle suggestion that tobacco chewing on the part of the lad in the srory strengthens the frontier flavor, though the boy is hero enough without it. And the obvious melodrama of the plot might have been softened to good artistic effect.
A film, however, stands as an incomparable \ picture of that none too well remembered period