Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1926)

(>2 Alice Terry is a beautiful Austrian spy in "Mare Nostrum." The shadow on the wall is Antonio Moreno's. MARE NOSTRUM," the new Rex Ingram production, is a leisurely, unexciting tale by the fiery author of "The Four Horsemen." At times, it is a beautifully photographed travelogue, with its scenes of Marseilles, Pompeii, Naples, Vesuvius, and all points south. At. other times, it touches fleetingly on drama. Once in a while, wisps of smoke arise, giving visible sign of the fire that smolders beneath, but the atmosphere is generally clear, and the dramatic tension short-lived. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The season has been so full of big dramatic moments that the wear and tear on the reviewers has been considerable. "Mare Nostrum" is the season's sedative. To be sure, it has its submarines sinking passenger vessels, and it has two rather terrible Teutons, but the magnificent grandeur of the Mediterranean has washed the poison away. It is very interesting to see a film that has been taken, as the program says, "in authentic Continental locales and on the Mediterranean." The plot, the players, and the turmoil fade gently into the background, and the beauty of the settings runs away with the picture. If I were about to make a great film, I should journey to a flat space full of billboard advertising, ashes and broken bottles, with a good view of the The Screen Our reviewer, with Felix the Cat, sees By Sally three Malted Milk cows, and I should erect sets all over this place, and turn my actors loose on it, confident that they would emerge triumphant from such a background. But scenery swallowed up "The Vanishing American," and "Mare Nostrum" is dwarfed by its surroundings. The story of "Mare Nostrum" is the romance of Captain Ulysses Ferragut and the beautiful and ill-fated Freya Talbcrg. Captain Ferragut is drawn into German associations through his love for this lovely Austrian, and unwittingly becomes instrumental in destroying his own son. When he realizes that the submarine he has aided is the same one that has torpedoed the ship that was carrying his child, remorse and the desire for revenge smother his passions and clear his mind. The scene where Alice Tern-, as Freya, is shot as a spy is a really thrilling one. Wearing her jewels and her furs, a chic and becoming hat, and the very latest Paris gown, she faces the firing squad technically perfect. So many of our heroes and heroines have met an unhappy fate recently, that to have these two good-looking young people die in the end seemed no more than reasonable to me. Antonio Moreno sinks slowly into the depths of his beloved Mediterranean, and as there has been a symbolical inference throughout the picture that Freya and Amphitrite, the goddess of the sea, were in some way one and the same, his fate does not seem too harsh. If you can be appeased by what is to happen to your principal characters after they die, this may be a crumb of comfort to you. The cast is mostly a foreign one, and it seemed to me that they v/ere unusually pictorial. Michael Brantford, as Estcban, the young son, is a very capable child actor. Mr. Ingram has paid more attention to fascinating details than he has to his story as a whole. But with such a wealth of beautiful and genuine things to choose from, it is not surprising to me that the artist has eclipsed the director. There is a lovely bit where Amphitrite rises from the sea in her chariot, drawn by four white horses, and there are some rather ghastly views of a small but active octopus. At no time does "Mare Nostrum" border on the cheap or silly, and the interiors and exteriors alone are worth going to see. More Scenic Beauty Robert J. Flaherty's new picture, "Moana," is as southern and seductive as the tropics themselves. There is no story and no drama, for to have a story, one must have a villain, and surely no one could be villainous in this pictured paradise. I thought this film an unusually fine one, better even than "Nanook," but general opinion seems to be against me. The struggles against the snarling winter in "Nanook" seem to have caught the public fancy more than the gorgeous abundance in "Moana." But to me, beside "Moana," "Nanook" seems a bleak and colorless stepsister.