The Moving Picture Weekly (1918-1919)

-THE MOVING PICTURE WEEKLY -17 TODAYS AND SUNDAY'S PROGRAMSAT THE MOVW^ 1& f'1CTwOE_PcayugVSC_OC_CMAQACTCa 5T.anT|NO su Itumamti^ \ yOT'c/ Prodvcton // OOPOTMY *p*c of tenderneu Scmicalty Superb Vibratat with Thrillt Thii production come* direct Irom New York, where it u now playing at advanced prices. Film Triumph Next Release atStillman "THE HEART OF HUMANITY" DECLARED TO BE A PEER OF "THE BIRTH OF A NATION." By Archie Bell An adv. in the "Cleveland News" that brought business for the Stillman Theatre. I COUNTED myself fortunate to have seen "The Heart of Humanity." You'll feel the same way about it after you see it at the Stillman Theatre all next week. It's a masterpiece, a film triumph. And you know that masterpieces are rare; you owe it to yourself to see them as they pass in review. What is it about? Love. It tells the old, old story, and the story so vibrates with thrills that it becomes a veritable epic of tenderness. Once Hal Reid told me that the keynote to all very successful dramas (and he the author of over one hundred produced plays ought to know) is mother-love. Others might have another opinion, but love fraternal, maternal, militant — love triumphant, is the basis of most all great drama. This combines all and more, because it has for its great central motif a love for all humanity. It was this that recently won the great war. The war is the setting for the larger episodes and moving scenes in this drama; but the writer and producer have done what Griffith did in "The Birth of a Nation," they weave such an affectionate bond between the spectator and the little group around a single hearthstone that the war becomes the great event in the life of that family and not merely an excuse for showing "scenes in France" during the four years that follow 1918. SCENES LAID IN CANADA. The scenic arrangements of "The Heart of Humanity" are superb. Up in Canada, somewhere in the beautiful lake country distant from too much "civilization," lives the Widow Patricia with her fine brood of sons, every one of them true blue. The beautiful little Nanette, ward of the priest, seems to be the "choice" of every youth in the village, but she becomes the wife of John Patricia and their wedding day is being celebrated in true primitive fashion, when news comes that Great Britain and Germany are at war. John and his four brothers answer the call. Husband and wife are separated, only to meet again amid the bloody scenes of warfare. The husband brought a "friend" to his primitive home in Canada, when he was returning there for his holiday. This gentleman was a German officer and a representative of the military caste traveling incognito. He attempted to force his attentions upon Nanette, and she detested him, feeling the horror of him with an instinctive sense known to women. Of course they meet again. The German then seems to be the master. He is in a frenzy of power and lust and there are thrilling moments before the husband comes to the rescue of his brave wife, and permits her to know the joy of being decorated by the French military for what she has done to bring light into sorrowing lives. She is invalided back to Canada. "Then the Yanks came." This subtitle naturally rushes the story along to its conclusion. Things changed after that, as all the world knows. John came back home, but he left brothers behind on the battlefield. The poor mother sits in her home, as she receives the sad news (a la "The War Bride"), and looking at her little grandson who has come to bless the home during the period of war she sobs a prayer of thanksgiving: God has taken away her beloved, but He has also given life. There are many incidentals to this pulsating, throbbing story, and although the film runs to eight reels, it is not too long. Every episode in the action seems nicely built to dovetail with what has preceded and what succeeds. There are vivid pictures of modern warfare, some of them seeming to be actual photographs of historical importance, at any rate they are splendidly made and strikingly illustrate the biggest event in the history of the last two thousand years. Miss Dorothy Phillips gives an excellent portrayal of Nanette, the girlwife and noble heroine. Eric von Stroheim is one of the cleverest, most impressive villains that I have ever seen on the screen. Here is "heavy" acting that looms up in such repulsive fashion that it compels critical admiration over anything done by the smiling William Stowell, who personates the hero, John Patricia. ACTRESS MAKES DEBUT. Margaret Mann, who is said to make her film debut in this piece, gives a beautiful performance of the mother of the boys, happy, sensitive, sympathetic, and proves herself to be an actress of imagination that registers itself splendidly — although it is said that she has not hitherto known that she was an actress at all, and that she was picked as a "type." "The Heart of Humanity" has one hundred points to commend it that might be enumerated, but that would be mere repetition of various synonyms for excellence. The picture is the peer of "The Birth of a Nation." Nothing deserves higher praise.