Moving Picture World (Jan-Mar 1914)

32 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD few cells in his brain had gone wrong and he was covetous but at length he goes really mad and returns to the scene of the murder, where he is seen by the scientist lying m wait for him, and captured. His actions at the tree cannot be criticized, since he was crazy and beyond all rules. But would it not have been more effective to have shown him merely as standing there shuddering? The spectator's mind would have had less to do and would have been freer to feel emotion over it. As it is we see him doing the deed again in pantomime and have to wonder whether it is natural. Reliance a Million Dollar Company Harry E. Aitken, Backed by New York and Chicago Bankers, Takes Over Carlton Laboratories. INCORPORATION papers are ready for filing in a new company, to be known as the Reliance Motion Picture Company, with a capital stock of $1,000,000, to produce great dramas by great authors for the Mutual Film Corporation of New York, at a cost of from $25,000 up. Harry E. Aitken, president of the Mutual, is the organizer and head of the new concern, and his associates are prominent New York and Chicago bankers. This organization will take over the immense new studios of the Carlton Motion Picture Laboratories, one of which has just been completed on the estate of the late Clara Morris in Yonkers. Another, recently pur,chased, is the great Kineniacolor studio in Los Angeles, and the third is a big four-story loft building at 29 Union Square, corner of Sixteenth Street and Broadway. All of these will be under the immediate direction of D. W. Griffith, .\mong the big things to be done at once are a tremendous production of "The Clansman," by Thomas Dixon; "The Escape," a eugenic drama by Paul Armstrong, and other great features by Thomas Nelson Page, Ambassador to Italy; John Kendrick Bangs, George Pattullo, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Robert H. Davis, Homer Croy and Paul West. To get the actual atmosphere of the stories, the pictures will be taken in the original locale, new studios being opened next month in London and the South of France. So as to have the productions historically and scientifically correct the leading experts, including the foremost professors of the prominent colleges of the world, will be engaged as critics. This great feature service, organized to assist the Mutual in supplying the greatest motion picture features ever produced, will keep abreast of the actual happenings of the day just like a daily newspaper, and photograph the greatest events of the time as they occur with the actual celebrities who participate in them. President .\itken. when asked if the new organization would make any changes in the present schedule of single and double releases of the Reliance Company said it would not, although perhaps occasionally a double-reel might be substituted for a single. The chief object of the increased capitalization, he said, was to go after the really big stuff. KLEINE PROSECUTING "QUO VADIS?" INFRINGER. Paul De Onto was served by the L'nited States Marshall, after being trailed by detectives, while leaving his office in Chicago, December 17th, in connection with the suit filed November 28th by George Kleine in the United States District Court alleging infringement of copyright. De Onto operated what was known as the "Quo Vadis Film Company" of Chicago, although the company did not appear to have been incorporated under the laws of the 'State of Illinois De Outo marketed a picture called "Quo 'Vadis?" in three reels. Mr. Kleine wishes to warn exhibitors that a series of suits is pending in the United States District Court against infringements of lithographs, heralds, etc. Many exhibitors have been unknowingly guilty of violations of the copj-right law. While Mr. Kleine does not desire to punish anyone, he feels it necessary to vigorously prosecute these infringements in the interests of the exhibitor as well as his own. THIS TROUBLE PICTURE WAS TOO STRONG. There is a moral for script writers and producers in a short story recently printed in the metropolitan journals. It told how a widow, Mrs. Kelsey, of Harrison, N. J., in a picture theater saw portrayed on the screen a series of domestic troubles that exactly paralleled her own. It must have been one of the "misery" pictures. A woman is bereft of her husband, she has a quarrel with her daughter, and her son is placed in a sanitarium. When Mrs. Kelsey returned from the theater she told a neighbor what she had seen and how it had depressed her. When the neighbor called upon Mrs. Kelsey later in the evening she discovered the woman dead. She had turned on the gas. The Message of the Sun-Dial Reviewed by Louis Reeves Harrison. A'V'ISL^ALIZED romance of great beauty, one that stamps Director Ridgeley as an artist born as well as trained. In this day of mighty pretense and meager performance, I do not hesitate to adjudge him an artist and 'one of the best kind, dominated by ideas rather than by theatricalism, imagination being his master trait. With a well-chosen and well-balanced company at his disposal, and with photodramas that suit his purposes, he visualizes not only the story he has to tell, but he creates that important element of success — beauty — by his method of narration, by exquisite choice of the story's environment. Scene from "The Message of the Sun Dial" (Edison). Mabel Trunelle is another important factor. But for the fact that I know of her personal relations, I might justly call her his sister artist, so delicately does she interpret her roles in. dramas of his selection. In this especial case her part is not a striking one, but she gives it high value by her subtle charm of performance. She achieves a sex conception that is clean and sweet to the eye, and to her intelligence as a woman must be ascribed a delightful harmony with the pictures in which she appears. She is an integral part of the composition because she grasps the salient characteristics of her role and intensifies its import. The story in this case is one of those which open up lives that have been lived that we may be reminded of how closely dramatic episodes in those lives resemble, and even affect, events of to-day under similar circumstances, like some of the strange confessions found in ancestral letters taken from a resting-place where they have long lain undisturbed, especially those which warn us against following blind impulse. An impulsive young girl is engaged to a naval officer, and there is no triangle, no villain or villainess. no dropped letter, no revolver, no automobile. Nothing intervenes between two lovinghearts until a slight misunderstanding grows in volume to an open quarrel and separation. The fault lies with the impulsive young beauty, and she is secretly aware of it, but her spirit is high, and slie sends the young officer away for good, bidding him never return. He goes, and the director uses this opportunity to carry us aboard some genuine war vessels, dreadnaughts and torpedo boat destroyers. In the midst of her after regrets she accidentally removes the top of an old sun-dial on the lawn and discovers a diary that has lain hidden there for more than a half century. .\ few words in the diary, as shown on the screen, serve as subtitles, and a situation similar to that in the modern story is shown to have arisen at the outbreak of hostilities between the North and the South. An impulsive girl, living on the same, fine old estate, drove the man she loved from her presence because of a trivial misunderstanding, with consequences so tragic as to give Miss Trunelle her opportunity in their portrayal. The message of the sun-dial deeply affects the girl of to-day, and she sends an old darkey servant on an adventurous errand to bring back the young officer, with consequences more in accord with the natural desire of their hearts. The united stories are of the romantic that is ever reappearing, bringing beauty and charm out of the ashes of the past, possibly a finer expression of the truth than rampant realism and much more in accord withj the tastes of a story-loving public