Motion Picture News (Jul-Oct 1914)

THE MOTION PICTURE NEWS 6i "CAPTAIN SWIFT" (Life Photo — Five Parts) REVIEWED BY WILLIAM RESSMAN ANDREWS THE company made a judicious selection of the players cast for the roles, the photography merits particular notice and the staging reveals a mastery of a difficult branch of the film art. The director, Edgar Lewis, sprung a succession of compelling scenes, rendered intensely dramatic by "flash backs'' effecting telling contrasts. This skilful arrangement of material prevented the action of a long story dragging from its own weight. The Life Photo Company has accomplished an almost impossible achievement — the production of a motion picture that maintains interest throughout, in spite of the fact that the plot is threadbare, presents no new angle and contains scenes whose pivotal action is based on an assumption of blindness THE QUARREL OVER to improbabilities. This, let it be repeated, is an achievement. For with all the defects in the scenario, the author's liberal use of '"long-armed coincidence" in bringing characters together in chance meetings ; his claptrap devices for identifying long-lost persons ; the old-fashioned illegitimate child plot, borrowed from the Bertha M. Clay school of fiction; the strain on one's belief in the limits of maternal instinct ; regardless of all these handicaps, the Life Photo Company has succeeded in producing a film of absorbing interest. It implies too much trust on the part of an audience to ask them to believe in the possibility of a mother's ability to recognize her son twenty-five years after parting with him at the age of six months or less. The author, C. Haddon Chambers, an English dramatist who some years ago brought out a play whose plot consisted of the marriage between a sentimental and idealistic curate bent on reforming the whole world and a lady in an occupation ancient (but not honored), shows the same inclination to make use of disagreeable subjects for plot material. He builds up the incidents of the story with the deliberate intention of gaining the sympathy for a character that starts life handicapped with a bar sinister and winds up as a notorious outlaw. Mr. Chambers makes the man stop short of murder, and then as a sop to the universal desire to see poetic justice meted out to transgressors the villain (or shall we say. "hero"?) dies in the last act. The Australian scenes, represented with pleasing fidelity to the original locale by the director, reveal Mr. Chambers as a close and appreciative student of those parts in Henry Kingsley's "Geoffery Hamlyn" and Charles Reade's "It Is Never Too Late to Mend," depicting life at the antipodes. David Wall as Captain Swift renders a role demanding vigor, with a full knowledge of the difficulties involved in the undertaking, and acquits himself satisfactorily. William H. Tooker played the foster brother with spirit and animation. "THE HUMAN SOUL" (Box Office — Three Reels) REVIEWED BY J. BURROUGHS NOELL A PHOTOGRAPH of the human soul is something that philosophers and scientists have dreamed about and mused over in their idle moments, but, like the philosopher's stone, the wisest even have always found it beyond their attainment. In this picture there is a photograph of the soul caught just after life departed from the body, and upon this the story hinges. It is an entirely novel and original idea in motion pictures, and, so far as our knowledge goes, in literature as well. The return of persons in spiritual form after death to influence the lives of dear ones is not new, either in stories or in the drama, but this photograph is equally effective and has the advantage of greater probability. The scene of the story is Southern California, arhidst the ruins of the earlier Mission period. The luxuriousness of the California foliage and' the tropical brilliance of the southern sun form a background that is in striking contrast to the sombre story. The full value of this contrast is appreciated by the director, and none of the details of setting have been chosen without thought and care. Photography plays its full part in producing the desired effect, and nothing is lost in this wellconsidered contrast through faulty or indistinct pictures. The acting is in the hands of an all-star cast, including Henry Stanley, as Juan Palores, the inventor of the comera. Madeline Pardee, as Catherine, his wife, whose soul is photographed; Bruce Smith, as Father Fabien, a Mission padre, the kindly spirit whose advice and guardianship is always for good in the lives of these people ; Jane Dey, as Alice, Palores' daughter, who is saved from eloping with a scoundrel by the wonderful photograph ; Francis McDonald, as Robert Thompson, the suitor of Alice, and Robert Grey, as Hernandez, the scoundrel who almost steals the girl away. "LOLA" (Amreican — Two Reels) REVIEWED BY J. BURROUGHS NOELL THE saddest thing oftentimes about a career on the dramatic or the operatic stage is the irreparable break that it causes with the folks that are left at home. Sometimes the girl v/hose ambitions lead her toward the footlights is forced to burn all of her bridges behind her, and never again, no matter how sorely her heart yearns, can she find the old place, the affections of those to whom she was once dear. This is the case of Lola exactly. She first sang in the church choir of the town; she attracted attention by the beauty of her voice, and became a prima donna. She is now playing for the first time in her home town, and the memory of the old ties that have been so sharply broken comes back to her. She longs for the forgiveness of her people, and she goes to her old home. She finds her sister making her living as a dressmaker, married to a former suitor of hers who is now blind. The shock of the girl's running away had killed the father. The sister has always pretended that she is Lola and the poor fellow has never known the difference. Lola does not reveal the secret, plants a kiss upon the little daughter's cheek and departs from these scenes of her girlhood which have changed so sadly in her absence and never reveals the sister's secret. The story is very simple, almost fragmentary, but it is handled with delicate touches and it arouses the keenest sympathy and holds it. Winifred Greenwood, as the ambitious girl who has become a famous prima donna, reveals a subtle grasp of the moods and the temperament of the artist. But it is not a flighty person that she is supposed to be, and Miss Greenwood gives us a clear portrayal of the yearning for home in the midst of a life of homelessness.