Motion Picture Classic (1923, 1924, 1926)

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Frederick James Smith Reviews the New Photoplays moral that one should seize one'i moment of happiness when and where one can. The [bafiez story full of claptrap, includ |H| the dam that burst. without hav anything in ular to do with the story. Monta Hell lias ed it into film form without taking any apparent interest. i ust a mediocre production. Still, as I have said, it has Miss t iarbo as La Brunno Here is a genuine spark. Miss Garbo ought to burn up the screen with any sort of logical role. Ricardo Cortez is pretty colorless as the drab Don Rafael. "The Torrent" wasn't the only Ibafiez novel to arrive during March. "Mare Nostrum," which Rex Ingram has been building casually between sun-baths on the beach at Nice, reached Broadway at last. Another Ibafiez Story "Mare Nostrum" unfortunately came along about six years too late. Translated, "Mare Nostrum" means "Our Sea," the sea in question being the Mediterranean. Its story deals with a young Spanish sea-captain who forgets his wife and his son when he falls in love with a beautiful German spy. He becomes a tool of the German U-boats and, when he comes to his senses, he finds that he has unwittingly helped kill his own son. The spy comes to her death before the rifles of a French firing squad and Don Esteban Ferragut himself dies when his vessel is torpedoed by a German submarine. The tragedy is studded with the old war hokum. Once again German spies rush about with satchels of germs. The story itself is pretty in Greta Garbo and Ricardo Cortez in Ibanez's "Torrent" Lillian Gish and John Gilbert in "La Boheme" ferioi [baflei arrived in the midst "i tin war hysteria, ai third rate novelist who wanted to achieve publicity and to tone his neutral homeland int.. the world war. With the return of sanity, it is possible to view Ibafiez clearly. This is, of course, beside the point. Our case against "Mare Nostrum" concerns its unhealthy note. There is an extended love scene before a glass tank in an Italian aquarium. Here the passion of the heroine is awakened by her observance of the way live crabs are fed to an octopus. The heroine thruout the story borders on the edge of being a case for Dr. Kraft-Ebbing. The director, Mr. Ingram, takes a left-handed swing at religion by playing upon an ignorant and drunken servant and his faith in sacred emblems. I credit most of the unsavory nature of the "Mare Nostrum" to Ingram. I doubt if any picture has ever nauseated me as did this production. I dont think the screen is the place for even a long-distance study in perversions. True, there are several interludes in "Mare Nostrum" that are very well done. One comes when the spy, Frcya Talberg, faces the firing squad. The other develops in the bowels of the German U-boat. But these are off balanced by one of the worst continuities that has ever reached the screen — and by Ingram's general insistence upon harping upon a n unhealthy note. Miss Terryplays Freya Talberg rather well. She far overtops Antonio Moreno, who plays Don Esteban Ferragut. I n fact, I cannot u n d e rstand how Moreno (Cont'd on page 70) Antonio Moreno and Alice Terry in "Mare Nostrum" 51