Wid's Films and Film Folk (1916)

Thursday, May 25, 1916. 3 NANCY’S BIRTHRIGHT Signal-Mutual. DIR EGIOR? i eciie tcte. css Nie 3 tena Murdock McQuarrie AUTHOR Murdock McQuarrie AS A WHOLE ......... Very bad, painfully crude STORY i 6 iiote telco a clio ebse) oe: ol MOM MaMe MCR kee) oie Awful DIRECTION. . 2%. .'02% sores « + temeenetore > Very bad PHOTOGRAPHY: ........-02 eee cee ceceee Fair THIGHTINGS) oo ect. lo @ aioe Seamenemeleltel ses Ordinary CAMERA WORK ........-.-++--+++:Acceptable STA RS cos oi cdeteue tes, suedets fecere. ouch s omemeMemem emails Were none SUPPOR Diy he te 2 o= cous ollel > operaBeme Very ordinary FXTHRIORS © cto seikes « enete « eiemenenene iris se Acceptable TNTERIORS 48). 6. 0 esc. . oleae Few and poor AVEDA TD oak ee eecet loi onl > colander oRsiameb tsp pire Poor RUIN GTI aise eee one llal et re neps aOR do Five parts ECAUSE I have to work for you fellows it is necessary that I sit through a lot of bad films, but I believe that this is about as painful a subject as I have seen in some time. ee The plot is elementary “movie” melodrama, the acting is crude and conventional, the situations never convince and we have a few poor sets used repeatedly from the same angle until they become, very tiresome. ) The story is decidedly jumpy and we have wild leaps in continuity without any attempt at proper development, with the result that you soon get to the stage where you take it as it comes without worrying much about the why or wherefore. We are offered long scenes of a millionaire inspecting his own steel plant, which gives opportunity for the showing of many views of a steel plant, something which is decidedly out of date. There is a bookkeeper who apparently makes enough money to own a beautiful home, an automobile and send to boarding school an orphan his mother has adopted. There is a gang of crooks of the typical “movie” variety, dominated by the “wicked willun,” who is the general manager of the millionaire’s plant, and these characters are offered in about twenty-five scenes, all of which are enacted in one small set with the camera always “shooting” from the same angle. There are such important scenes as telephone conversations between the hero and heroine for no particular reason, and when there is nothing else to cut to the director has shown us a few scenes of himself seated in an awful set having memories, which allows for a few rather ordinary dissolves. Edythe Sterling, as the heroine, was anything but good ,and not particularly pleasing ‘to look at, and Nobert A. Myles looked very much like the type that _ you generally find serving as butcher-boy in a small town. In several places we had scenes which were decidedly objectionable, among these being one where a drunkard-father suggested that they “chloroform the brat,” when he found that his wife had given birth to a girl baby, and in another scene we find him going into a room where his wife is dead, taking a look at the body and then taking a drink. In one place we had contrasting scenes showing the aged millionaire eating dinner, and the hero, 596 WID’S PAINFULLY CRUDE MELO, POORLY DONE, TERRIBLY EDITED. a heroine and the hero’s mother eating dinner, with | several flashes back and forth, and then when the © ee a ee ee eee ee millionaire finished eating first he went into the | library and sat down and had some memories while © the other characters finished their meal. Possibly the millionaire had dyspepsia, and could not eat as long as the poorer family. $ There were a number of rather startling develop— ments through the progress of the story, as for © instance, where one of the characters was run down ~ by the hero’s automobile, which by the way was © very badly done, and had his injuries dressed by © the heroine, she telling him that she was an orphan. : Immediately afterwards, through some mysterious — mental means, the father decided that because this girl was an orphan she was certainly his long-lost © child. He had not, seen her for sixteen years. The crook then kidnapped his daughter, locking her in a room and choking her, but the information that this terrible-looking individual was her father did not seem to startle her in the least. She believed that everything was good and told a degenerate — hunchback so when he started to attack her, with the result that the hunchback immediately reformed ~ and rescued her from her dangerous position. % In another place we find the heroine deciding that it was Martingale who was to be robbed because she had been told that the crooks were planning to secure the fortune of a millionaire by bringing a girl to adopt. There was nothing indicated in the action which would give her the information that the © millionaire’s name was Martingale. Of course, the director had to send her to Martingale’s, because ~ then he told her how much she looked like his daughter, so that she would go home and tell the hero © who would remember immediately that sixteen years — Deke that he had carried a note to friend Martin— gale. The “willun” attempted to “frame” a theft, placing the blame on the hero, and when he took the money from the hero’s room and put it back into the safe he pulled down the blinds in the hero’s — room, but conveniently allowed all of the window shades in the other office to remain up, and the door open, so that a discharged employee, who had con-_ veniently arrived at the psychological moment to kill the villain, saw the theft and so was able to save the hero after his arrest. Z There were dozens of other situations in this which were equally as bad and the cutting throughout was terrible, because whenever. there was a_ bad spot to be filled in, the man who edited the production simply reached out and put in a piece of — film without much thought as to whether it really — belonged or not. But the crowning insult of the entire offering was the final “big scene,’ where we find a dinner being given in the millionaire’s home ~ in honor of the finding of his daughter. We had been told that this man had a fortune of twenty millions to leave his granddaughter, and un to this © time we had seen only one room in what was sup— posed to be his mansion. It looked fair enough from the outside, but this one set was the typical _ “movie” director’s idea of a millionaire’s home, it being the well-known staircase in the back of the set with steps running up either side. We had about thirty scenes in this set before the grand finale, and it was quite plainly “planted” as a library or living room. When it came to the