Moving Picture World (Jul-Sep 1911)

7> ) T1IK MOVING PICTURE WORLD Licensed. "Then You'll Remember Me" (Edison), August 25 Some of the scenes of this interesting picture were produced to be 11 50 to speak, with the song, "Then You'll Remembi r Me," ami to illustrate it. W hen, about three months ago, a lyric photoplay, "Silver Threads .Among the Gold," was released, this reviewer for several weeks heard that air hummed or whistled on the street or played on the piano in private houses he chanced to be passing. It might have been coincidence or consequence. The song was a fine song and the picture that embodied it was simply constructed, sincere and very human. It was a true lyric photoplay, one that content to be merely an expression of the song, a jar which the song might be poured and nothing else. The result was a masterpiece, a picture of which the Edison Company can well be proud. More recently, this same company produced a patriotic picture telling the story of our national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner." This also was successful, but wasn't a lyric picture in the same sense as the former was. The present picture, "Then You'll Remember Me," attempts to weld scenes that are truly poetical and in which the sentiment of the lyric is dominant, with scenes that have nothing whatever to do with either song or sentiment. As someone once said to the poet Wordsworth, "It is safe to put poetry into prose, but to put prose into poetry is deadly." That is what this picture does. It doesn't pretend to be a prose play with poetic scenes, but a poetic play, and its very prosey scenes disappoint us. Some prose was perhaps necessary to give the picture backbone, but the picture seems to have much, quite unnecessary prose. There are four long conversations in it which we have no mean of fathoming. The worst one of these is between the two senior partners (strangers to the picture till that moment I in their business office at Sidney. It shouldn't have been in any picture, much less a lyric one. The result is that while the lyric makes the situation in some of its scenes, concrete and personal, its use serves to point out the picture's bald places. The other fault of the picture is, that in its endeavor to be imaginative it overshoots the mark. This is true in several places, especially in the attitude of the players to their vivid mental images. These people were not mad. People who really experience such visions know that they are not fooled by them. They may step toward them and even hold out their arms to them, but only in the greatest stres> of passion and in the greatest hopelessness. The closing of this fine picture was, we are sorry to say, awkward. "The Wool Industry of Hungary" (Eclipse), August 23. — Pictures of sheep come out very well in animated photography. Their wooly fleeces give pleasant contrast with meadow trees or a background of hills, and there is a sentiment attached to them that helps out a picture not a little. This picture gives some idea of sheep and wool growing and wool making conditions in Hungary. Methods seem to be very primitive there. "Condemned for Treason" (Eclipse ). August 23. — Tt is widely held, or seems to be, that moving pictures, because they are not hampered by the narrow limitations of the stage, are above the limitations that the drama accepts and utilizes to deepen the impression, When a scenario writer uses a novelist's freedom in making a picture, it may tell a clear and pleasing story, but it is not so likely to impress the spectators with the qualities of the situation effectively, is likely to fail to give any lasting impression at all, as in this case. The idea in this picture would make a good story. A young French artist is helped by an Italian basket maker's daughter and he falls in love with her. War breaks out and he lias to fight against this girl's friends. He is the means oi saving her life and that of her father and mother, and for tin he is imprisoned five years for the tr< [ping nemy. On his release, he finds the girl married. \ time does the picture show us a truly dramatic struggle. It is wholly incidental, though the incidents are connei into a char story. The scenes are extremely well acted. But t he story is so weak that approval of the players is the greatest pleasure that the picture affords. The majority of pictures are weak for this same reason. They lack dramatic construction. When setting forth any intensely interesting narrative, as in some historical pictin ■ construction may be not necessary, but any picture is likely to be stronger because of it, where it can be used. "Grey Wolves" (Selig), August 24. — The real grey wolves of this picture were, in one sense, not the tame animals used in the forest scenes, but the speculators in the Chicago wheat pit. Though not a life portrayal, it's a Story of business life. Both hero and villain are what might be called giants of the wheat pit (stock market). In the early they are rivals in love. The villain is a bad loser and tries to ruin the hero by "bearing" on the wheat market. They and their adherents come together on the floor of the pit and the scene makes a good picture of the rush and pandemonium of that place at such a time, with its excited faces, its hands waved in the air, its pushing and struggling for place. The hero's health breaks under the stress of the encounter and he is almost ruined financially. The doctor sends him to the woods, where he is pictured as having a different kind of struggle for his life, this time with read wolves. He returns and, in another encounter with the villain on the floor of the pit, wins and is made richer at the villain's expense. The picture is not up to Selig standard. Its first weakness lies in the fact that the great majority of spectators wont understand enough of what goes on in "the pit" to get a clear idea of the struggle. Most will be prejudiced against the hero as a wheat speculator; and not sympathizing" will lose the thread of the story and let the rest pass on over their heads. Even those who understand will find in this picture of the pit, good as it is, many suggestions of unreality. It might have been effective on the stage where voices and noise would have hidden its necessary defect, which is that nearly every one of the minor figures acted his part well for a moment, stopped acting for just one second, when perhaps he was brushed aside by one who was acting more vehemently for the time, and took up his part again. The mind notices these things and they ruin the illusion. This reviewer has never seen a battle scene where actors' faces or even gestures were plain that was truthfully effective and for just this reason. The picture of the hero's experience in the forest was weak for two reasons. It was "played"' for the storv's sake. This was very plain in one instance. The hero. ' hearing wolves, ran away from his gun. A man might have done so, of course; but the action weakens our sympathv for him. and the small boy especially will feel disgusted. " It wasn't necessary. Guns sometimes get jammed. The man might have been shown as crouching in the back of the hut after he had reached it, depending on picking off the wolves as they came through the window. This would account for the tact that he didn't protect the window that he was unable to close. It was naturally the place to begin his struggle with them. The scene was also weak from the fact that the wolves were a bit too tame. The villain looked more like a stock broker than the hero did. He did not fit his part very well. The minor actors did very good work. "A Rebelious Blossom" (Lubin). August 21. — She was a rebelious blossom, a schoolgirl (Miss Lawrence) and. as pictured, a charmingly prankish young lady. She didn't like the idea of _ her mother's marrying again" The player who takes the widow's part also deserves praise. .Mr. Johnson is the grey-haired suitor, and fills the part with distinction. In the picture there arc four or five, perhaps more, bits of true comedy that fairly scintillate; but as a whole the comedy shows unnecessary weaknesses as though it were hastily constructed. 1 first sCene is in the heroine's room at a boarding « hool. J here is going to be a shindig, tea and cookies, and the other -iris 111 wrappers are sneaking in. They get carrying -n and one girl laughs so loud thai the head mistress knocks. 1 hey can't hide fast enough and are caught This schoolma'm isn't very well drawn. She writes to the hero