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The Shadow Stage
81
lamps. Ilarron is ideal as the boy, and Walter Long, as the Musketeer, approaches but does not equal his performance of Gus, in " 1 he Birth of a Nation."
Spades are not once termed garden im plements in this sector, nor are the kisses paternal or platonic.
In this stupendous chaos of history and romance the lack of a virile musical is the chief tragedy. Proper melody would
have hound the tar provinces of this loose
empire of mighty imagination into a strong, central kingdom.
1 wish Mr. Griffith had worked out a whole evening of his great Babylonian story. Sticking to this alone, he would have added an art-product to literature as enduring as Flaubert's "Salammbo."
It' I may predict : he will never again tell a >tory in this manner. Nor will anyone else. The blue sea is pretty much where it was when the sails of the Argonauts bellied tight in tlie winds of a morning world, and so are the people who live in the world. Still we wish to follow, undisturbed, the adventures of a single set of characters, otto thrill with a single pair of lovers. Verily, when the game is hearts two's company, and the lovers of four ages an awful crowd.
W
E'VE long been waiting the real screen novel. "Gloria's Romance" so announced itself, but slid from novel into dime-novel. Five reels is too short a space for novelization ; ten reels, too much unless the tale is mighty in substance and fat with incident.
Eight reels seems to be a happy medium. and "The Common Law." of that length, a genuine celluloid novel worthy the name.
It is Clara Kimball Young's first photoplay under her own brand. It is of Selznick release, is adapted from Robert W. Chambers' novel of the same name, and was directed by Albert Capellani. It has a perfect cast, flawdess production, generally good acting, and an environment which bespeaks not only gentility, but absolute reality. In fact, if I were commanded to select the big popular success among all autumn screen plays, this would be my choice.
To begin with, here is a love-tale firmly entrenched in American favor. It's rather idle, I think, to recount the storv of Valerie
West. Mosl >'( you remember her dying mother ; her search for work ; her failure to find congenial employment in the theatre; her posing in the studio "i ihr magnificent Neville; N i \ ille's hearl smash on her be half, and the fierce wooing of Querida, the
Spanish artist, who would male upon the
"common law" plan no court ties for him! So to the end. where Querida dies in a fall from Valerie's window, and
Neville draws his model into his anus and
home despite the pleadings of his adopted
sister and his family.
Miss \ oung, as usual, touches no momenl of great emotion— but then, neither did Valerie, if we remember the story correctly.
She is always charming. The posing scenes
Capellani has handled adorably. In making the disrobing girl sit in a heavy-armed Roman chair which reveals most discon certing Hashes while keeping modesty within perfect censorial bounds, he exhibited true Gallic wit.
Earle Foxe and Pauline
Frederick in ' 'Ashes of
Embers."