Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Aug 1919)

CLASSIC The Celluloid Critic (Continued from page 45) mount produced from a Dana Burnett story. There are no battlefield, and tanks, and smoke screens and glamour. It is just the story of a lonely soldier in a training camp, one William Pettigrew who wanders to New York on leave, takes a fancy to a picture of a chorus girl in a shop window and ther ventures to stand outside the stage-door to watch his idol pass. Out of the chance meeting grows an odd romance. The chorus girl turns down a millionaire admirer to wait for the bashful Pettigrew’s return. And, when he marches back up the Avenue, she is in the first line of cheering spectators. Ethel Clayton is vivid as the chorus girl who longs for unadulterated love while Monte Blue is admirable as the lonely khaki lad. Blue is advancing remarkably. “Pettigrew’s Girl,” too, has something besides heart appeal. It has a millionaire follower who isn’t a scoundrel and a meeting between the chorine and her Billy in training camp, where, (shades of romance!), he is peeling potatoes on “kitchen police.” if “Pettigrew’s Girl” doesn’t touch you, please see your family physician about a summer tonic. And now comes a regrettable duty, commenting upon Harry Garson’s production of Major Rupert Hughes’ “The Unpardonable Sin.” Major Hughes built his novel around the Hun invasion of Belgium and the story is one atrocity after another. In the main, it centers about the efforts of an American girl to locate her mother and sister in illfated Belgium, where they have been the victims of German ruthlessness in the most repulsive sense of the word. It is our personal opinion that “The Unpardonable Sin” is not a picture to be shown . to audiences of both grown-ups and children. There is nothing to be gained at this time by reproducing wartime depravity and the possibility of cheap exploitation of a picture of this type savors nothing more nor less than of the commercialization by Americans of Hun atrocities. God forbid that Americans do this! Blanche Sweet returns to the screen after a long absence, playing both Dimny Parcot and her ill-fated sister, Alice. The characterizations, both keyed at a high and gruelling emotional height, apparently prevent shad ings. At any rate there are no gradations to the performance and Miss Sweet does not touch us anywhere. More effective is Mary Alden’s playing of the mother. Marshall Neilan directs “The Unpardonable Sin” without revealing any particular touch of imagination. “Fires of Faith,” the Lasky-Salvation Army production, sounds a much healthier note. “Fires of Faith” comes pretty near being a dramatization of the famous Salvation doughnut. It is propaganda softened with romance, dealing with the activities of the Salvation Army in France and sugarcoated with a double-barreled love theme. There is a little country girl who is saved from the streets by the Salvation Army and her country lover; and a rich young society girl and her admirer, a young waster. All four meet in France, the girls as Salvation lassies, the men as soldiers, and each is regenerated. Edward Jose’s direction is adequate and the playing of Catherine Calvert as the country girl. Ruby de Remer, (who is improving remarkably), as the society maid, and Robert Anderson, the immortal M. Cuckoo of “Hearts of the World,” as the bumpkin lover, is of an excellent average. Eugene O’Brien is — well — Eugene O’Brien is the waster who sees the light. We went to see “The Red Lantern,” (Metro), Alla Nazimova’s latest photoplay, with high anticipation, but the thing left us cold. Not thru any fault of Nazimova, however. The story, based on Edith Wherry’s novel, has simply been swamped in gorgeousness. Before such massive and glittering backgrounds, all personal interest dwindles. We lost all desire to know the fate of the little half English-half Chinese girl who, raised and educated to Western ideals by missionaries, suddenly falls in love and comes smash up against the blood barrier. Embittered, she falls in with a plot against the white race, poses as the goddess of the red lantern to lead the Boxers, and, in the end, loses her life. Nazimova plays this girl of contrasting racial moods finely, in fact it is her best performance since “Rev(Continucd on page 83) The Fame and Fortune Contest Is Closing {Continued from page 49) be known thruout the civilized world. The Fame and Fortune jury now includes: Mary Pickford, Thomas Ince, Cecil de Mille, Maurice Tourneur, Commodore J. Stuart Blackton, James Montgomery Flagg, Howard Chandler Christy, Samuel Lumiere and Eugene V. Brewster. 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