Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1922)

Motion Picture Time and Money PHOTOPLAY'S SELECTION of the SIX BEST PICTURES of the MONTH JANE EYRE ♦ WOMAN'S PLACE ♦ THEODORA * THE SIN FLOOD ♦ DANGEROUS CURVE AHEAD ♦ THE SHEIK THE SIN FLOOD— Gold wyn IT is a photoplay you will wish to see, and. seeing, you will remember. One hesitates to say the obvious things in connection with it. It is drama, with a beauty and dignity that does not stoop to the melodramatic at any time. Locked in an air-tight bar-room, while a flood surges over the Mississippi town, is an odd assortment of human beings who can live only until the oxygen in the air is exhausted. Among them we find an unfrocked minister, played in masterful manner by James Kirkwood; the bar-keeper, who has stolen his wife; a successful cotton broker, Richard Dix, and the girl he has deserted, Helene Chadwick; a tramp; an actor; riffraff from life's wreckage called to face death together. Those who believe that massive sets and thousands of "extras"' are necessary to the photoplay of the day, that "Action!" must be the watchword, that a vast expenditure of money or the "Made in Europe" trademark makes for success in this field, will do well to see this intense, masterful drama, unfolding for the most part in one bare room, with but seven or eight members to the cast. Frank Lloyd, with "Madam X" and many other successes to his credit, directed this filmization of Hcnning Berger's "Synafloden." His skilled touch is not unlike that of the late George Loane Tucker. James Kirkwood does the greatest work of his entire career, but the other players have parts of almost equal importance, and play them well. Here is a photoplay for the entire family, an exquisite bloom in a desert of mediocrity. DANGEROUS CURVE AHEAD— Goldwyn HAVING settled the tragedy of motherhood in conclusive fashion, Rupert Hughes turns his attention to another phase of the great American home life, and focuses the lens of his camera upon the vicissitudes of a young married couple. "Dan£erous Curve Ahead" is the result. Viewed as entertainment, it ranks with "The Old Nest." The harrowing experiences of Hurley Jones and his bride, Phoebe, will strike responsive chords in the heart of every normal person who has ever had occasion to murmur those two wonderful and terrible words, "I do." These young people both possess the usual quota of human faults and virtues; they love, marry, have children, and pay the grocer's bill in the usual healthy way. Finally, the inevitable third person appears on the scene and makes an attempt to wreck the happy home. It is at this point that Mr. Hughes almost sails into dangerous waters and almost forsakes the realms of reality for the realms of melodrama to supply a theatrical climax for a story that needs nothing of the kind. THE SHEIK— Paramount HERE is romance. Red hot. If you read the story you will go to sec the filmization. If you haven't, you will go anyway. This is popular entertainment — that and nothing more. But that is enough. The best-selling story by E. M. Hull, scoffed at by the higher-browed critics, but read and re-read by two-thirds of the women in this country, has been made into a very exciting, very oldfashioned photoplay. It's the old-time adventure, much more artistically presented than formerly, but still just a glorified movie. The exquisite Agnes Ayres as Diana, the English heroine, and Rudolph Valentino in the title role, perform their parts splendidly. George Melford's direction is. as usual, competent but not unusual. Vou should see this if you aren't too weary to imagine that you might have been Diana and The Sheik living their desert romance. 67