Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1913)

Si6 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD "The Higher Justice" A Reliance Two-Part Feature with Good Situations and Plenty of Action. H. C. Judson. FORREST HALSEY, the author of "The Higher Justice," has little liking for the dull and slow. This, like many of his other pictures, and the Reliance people have found it profitable to use a good deal of his work, will be far more likely to seem less than two thousand feet to the spectator than more. It is not quite up to his best; for it lacks the intellectual interest of one or two of his; but it does show the wakeful liveliness of mind and the interest in his own picture that makes situations come readily so that there is no padding and no need of it. The picture's central theme is a discussion of two very closely related facts of human experience and these are set forth in the lives of two half brothers. One brother is born Scene from "The Higher Justice" (Reliance). of a woman of good instincts, who has been deceived by a fake marriage; he is illegitimate and has been brought up on a farm, healthily. The other, his half brother, is legitimate, but has had the misfortune of being brought up by his father. At the climax, all three are brought together in a dramatic scene. The illegitimate son has been elected district attorney. The other son has lived a foolish life and, in an ungovernable fit of rage, has killed a man. The district attorney makes an able prosecution and the jury goes out to consid'er the case. ' Here, and not very .'Strongly from a dramatic viewpoint, the father tries to bribe the district attorney. Was it not too late at that time after the youth had confessed? But the mother enters the lawyer's office and recognizes her betrayer so that, now, the father knows that he is talking to his son and tells the attorney, who has refused the bribe, that he is working to convict his own brother. We now have a strong speech to the court, given on the return of the jury before the verdict has been announced, and in this the lawyer accuses the old man of being the real culprit rather than the weakling whom he has ruined. At this juncture, the culprit falls dead at his father's feet, and this outcome, while dramatically of some value, does not appeal to the mind. It is emotional, but it keeps the picture from arriving at a definite and clear-cut conclusion. The result is therefore not instructive. As an offering, the picture has high quality; it interests strongly. In the early part of the story, the author, in shaping its course, presents many situations, each of which would be big and substantial enough to furnish "the big scene" of an ordinary offering. Some of these scenes, by contrast, are a bit weak; but the poorest of them carries its part of the story and is hurried away into the forgotten past by the swift growth of the action. In giving the "punch" to these situations and scenes, the work of the players counts greatlj". As the picture opens, we find Earle Talbot playing the part of an unscrupulous college youth who meets Irene Hunt, as an unsophisticated country girl. Her father drives him off the farm and there is a runaway marriage, or the girl thinks it is. So far, we watch only in hope; but when the hoy's father learns that he has been absent from college and finds him with the girl, our attention is caught and held to the end. The scene of this meeting of father and young people is finely acted. The boy IS made a perfect cad in his repudiation of the girl before the father; one wants to hiss him. Following, come the contrasting pictures of the rich youth's marriage to a society woman and of the poor young mother's plight. The society scenes are not so natural as the farm scenes; but the producer, Oscar Apfel, has made the story most smooth. The things that happen are convincing even when, only once' in a while, the acting seems unnatural. As the boys grow up, . Irving Cummings takes the role of the poor lad and makes a very impressive district attorney, while Harry Spingler takes the other boy. It is a rather hard role, but he carries it well. He is especially strong in the scene in which he kills the foolishhr brutal man who tantalizes him, even in our eyes, almost beyond endurance. The act is wholly unpremeditated, is done in a blind wrath and at its most insane moment, and seems, for a second, almost worthy, so strongly do we sympathize with him just then. The outcome of the story can be foreseen too early, though it remains alive and interesting. We know that the character who is to be "brought to book" is the old father, the man who had so wronged the girl of the opening scenes, and when .the son commits the crime and the other son has been elected district attorney, Ave suspect that the father will jiiake some sort of plea and that he will be answered worthily. To reach what is called poetic justice, the guilty son had either to be acquitted or die. as he did. We believe poetic justice is not needed and that the people don't want it; but prefer actual life and think this picture would have been -tronger if the son had suffered for his crime by going to I'rison for a long term and the father, after the papers had jirinted the district attorney's scathing speech, had been dispised by all the world. Harking back to the early part of Scene from "The Higher Justice" (Reliance). the story, we find another weak point that lessened the value of the ending. Once, when the -father came in to remonstrate with his son for his fast living, the son asks him, "What kick have you got — I'm a chip of the old block." The father seems pleased with this and drinks a glass of wine with him. It was strange so soon after a remonstrance, and shows the father as incapable of the suffering that is his due at the end of the story. A man has to have some brains in order to be able to suffer. There is much that is lovely in the photography and in the scenes. One among many pleasing scenes is that in which the poor mother is seen working in a field with her son, and the scene following gives a taste of the human quality of the offering. For the rich man's automobile has broken down just outside and the two half brothers play migs, but don't know each other. NEW INDIANAPOLIS CONCERN. Incorporation papers have been filed by the Hyde Park Amusement Company with the Secretary of State of Indiana. The compan}^ will have its headquarters in Indianapolis and expects to open a high-class picture theater at Illinois and 30th Streets, that city, about September i. The incorporators are E. Hardv Linwood, president; Alvin C. Ostermeyer, vice-president; Henry S. Davidson, secretary and treasurer. It is the purpose of the company to build and operate other houses as rapidly as sites can be obtained and buildings completes.