The Moving Picture Weekly (1916-1917)

-THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY Ben Wilson and Francelia Billington who play the principal characters in "The Mainspring," by Chas. Agnew McLean. T HE MAINSPRING" is an unusual Red Feather photoplay ; a five-reel play that really holds the interest from the first moment that the subtitle is flashed on the screen until the final embrace of the hero and heroine is such a wonderful kind of rara avis in this day of padded features that the public as well as most of the moving picture men look on every five-reeler askance. Those who have followed the ascending scale of the recent Red Feather Photoplays, however, realize that perfect five-reel features can be made. A man says that a thing cannot be done, "absolutely impossible," and then the next year or even the next month some one comes along and does it, and the original wiseacre feels about as embarrassed as the papers did this last election morning. So it is with the one hundred per cent interesting picture, for in "The Mainspring" there is no doubt of its arrival and interesting presence among us. Now that the thrilling picture has Ben Wilson RED FEATHER Production Smith publications and a nc rected by Jack Conway in Mr. McLean and published eis a seri dual role in impressive arrived it is not hard to look into it and to discover just why this picture is so all-absorbing, while so many pictures fail to hold the interest. The reason is simply that into this film there has gone the best talent in every department txiat was at the command of the largest film manufacturing company in the world. To begin with every picture must first have a real plot. The plot of this one is from the pen of Charles Agnew McLean, a name that is universally known for the high quality of stories that have appeared under it in the past. Mr. McLean was for years one of our prominent magazine writers, and while active in this field there were few magazines in the country that did not print his charming stories. But he soon answered the call to a higher field and took up the task of an editor. Since joining the forces of Street and Smith as the editor of one of their publications several years ago he has rapidly risen and at present holds the enviable position of editor-in-chief or supervising editor of all the Street and Smith publications. Mr. McLean no longer has time to write stories and that is why his name is absent from the tables of contents where it used to appear so frequently. But a writer of Mr. McLean's ability cannot give up his art all at once. So when he had to give up writing as a profession he still devoted his spare moments to it. This explains how the Universal Company happens to have been able to secure a scenario from a man in such an important position. When Mr. McLean saw his scenario on the screen for the first time in the Universal projection room he was so impressed with it that he thereupon decided to novelize it and it will appear in one of the Street and Smith magazines. The construction of the plot of "The Mainspring" shows the experience that is behind the author. It is so cleverly planned that not until the very last is the entire story made known to the spectator, and all through the situation is so tense that the audience is literally on edge throughout the film So much for the plot, as there is really no adequate description that can be given of a plot. One has the