The Moving Picture Weekly (1920-1921)

14 -THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY Tke Screen, Tke Only Medium Througk wkick a Frenck Story Can te Told to An American Aud lence. Una Trevelyn, Clyde Filmore and Sam Devil's Passkey," in which tke author he believes to be his wife's lover and •yHE tremendous success scored by by Erich Von Stroheim's first Universal production, "Blind Husbands," which has been unanimously acclaimed one of the year's notable masterpieces, fbcuses the searchlight of public interest on that director's next achievement, "The Devil's Passkey," which vdll be released early this fall. Von Stroheim and his assistants were busy in the laboratory and editorial rooms for several weeks, supervising and assembling and cutting of the film. Over 100,000 feet of film was exposed for "The Devil's Passkey," and it was quite a task to reduce this mass of footage to the 7,000 feet of the finished picture. The director himself came to New York with the final cutting to make certain it reached 1600 Broadway safely. Officials of Universal City who have watched the filming of the production, the daily runs in the projection room and more recently in the laboratory, are enthusiastic in their praise of the newest Von Stroheim creation. They declare that in "Blind Husbands" this director has only given a promise of what he is capable of evolving on the screeri, and that in "The Devil's Pass ive Grasse in a tense scene from "The refuses to shake hands with the man wlw has paid his wife's modiste bill key" he has soared to much greater heights. Baroness DeMeyer wrote the story of this photodrama under the title of "Clothes and Treachery." It deals with Parisian life after the war, and no one knows her French capital more thoroughly than the Baroness, except be it Von Stroheim himself, who spent a great part of his early manhood in the gay European city. Many of the finest gems of Parisian literature and drama have been spoiled in the telling or presentation by being translated to English, because our language is incapable of expressing the fine shades of meaning possessed by the Gallic tongue, and because few American actors have the necessary temperament to interpret a real Parisian story. But here is where Von Stroheim shines. Continental Europe is his birthplace. As an Austrian count he mingled in the most exclusive circles in every capital from Petrograd to London, knows the gay and fashionable life of every European city, and still retains the point of view with which to mirror a French story as the author intended it. The story of "The Devil's Passkey" deals with a Parisian dramatist, his pretty and extravagant wife, a fashionable modiste who traffics in the folly of her exclusive patrons, an American officer having his fling in Paris before returning home, a gorgeous countess whose reputation is in the hands of the crafty shopkeeper and dozens of other characters who enter plausibly into the plot. Settings of the most beautiful design serve as a background for the story. Parisian streets and boulevards, the Odeon Theatre, the Allied Bazaar, the Grand Prix and a score of other places and incidents have been reproduced for this feature with rare accuracy. Chief among the players who participate in "The Devil's Passkey" are Sam de Grasse, Clyde Fillmore and Una Treveljm, who are shown in a scene at the top of this page, and Maude George, Ruth King, Mae Busch and Leo White. Why Does It Come *^Once to Every Woman''