New-York tribune., 1919-10-05
Tourneur Brings An Old
Melodrama Back TO Life

! dry, but changed world. From one
thing the collie dog has been unable
10 + OF ct Ter, the vision Of gypsy
gentleman who appears and disappears
| through a wood, from a moment of
destiny in gold and green forest.
Oh, it's you'll be sure of welcome
then, as she'll be sure of care,
Ny rowing, ranging wander lad from
God knows where!
Can you beat that, Mr.. Tourneur,
with all your up-todat realism aand
Tamlessness about gypsies-or gentle
men, either? With your collie-less,
chcck-suited little Cockney shopgirl,
your faithful observation Of the man
ners OF the lower classes? No, of
course you can't. Lovers who aspire
to be kept even temporarily i'm
mortal in the memories of to-day's
children must have common sense
enough to hire at least moments
residence is soap bubble. Ah! And
when we think of what moving pict-
ere forest might have been in your
hands-to say nothing of moving
picture COLLECTIVE must believe that
you passed up romance for reality, in
a y cture which nothing could make
real only because the long dead manu-
script never even whispered to you that
it was there.
1t IS extraordinary how the note of
the noisiest and shrillest of entertain
ments, modern Drury Lane melodrama,
has been reproduced without a sound.
All the staccato hustle, the sense Of
charact rization, the bits of real
though hard working comedy, the
hurly-burly of teeming, forward
pushing procession, hurries evenly on
In a cast where every name is picked
one Seena Owen glows like a jewel
with the only romantic feeling Of the
picture and Pauline Stark and Jack
l4olt play as we'll as people can the
modcrn melodrama lovers they have
been supplied with. We were extreme
ly glad to see Mr. Holt led back from
.S recent villanics to the path of
heroic virtue again. Of the scene at
the warehouse on the wharf we can
report that the attempt to drug and
W. the hero here could never begin
'frctiYc'v genuine in the
mixed mcdium--part reality, part can
-"e st..,., as Ii is In the single
Photographic medium Of picture.
In fact whether or not because with
the wharf we are getting nearer the
storm, the touch upon the picture
changes; glamour, mystery, excited
feeling begin to be painted in. The mur-
derous shadows of the warehouse, the
trapdoor into the ominous, soft tapping
of the river, the lowering of the body,
the good crooks hiding in the water to
defeat the wicked ones, the lights of the
police boat, all the funniest failures of
stage melodrama fall here with the full
shudder of their darkness, vivid as sus-
pense. We cannot say SO much for the
fire in the theatre, lavish, strenuous,
perfunctory-a fire that has never
Il Il O~1o DIT
response in him to deep water blazes
more automatically than any fire and
gives US, in the storm, real wonder in
picture making.
"Victory" in Sight
The wrecks interior scenes are splen-
didly done. but certainly no better than
those of the wreck in "The Little Ameri-
can" which did not resort to going out
after Dathos with gun, as in the pres
ent incident of the babies; the real
storm, the extcriors, are unique and un-
rivalled, unapproached. Here, indeed,
to-day's children may store away memo
ries ready to rise all their lives long at
the phrase "shipwrcckcd OFF the coast"
How they were done, those waves that
seem mountain high, those lifeboats
swallowed by the deep, those wind driven,
spray torn mists shrouding whole head
lands and cleaned through by hills of
wet rock like fortresses, yelling the
mouths of caves, beyond which as we
look out, in sudden pallid lights the
thronged decks Of the doomed ship flare
upon US and arc gonc-why, We have
no more idea how the thing was donc
than if we had never seen a picture.
But We can't help guessing that beyond
miracles Of photography, cutting, gener-
alship there grew, out of all tho terror
and the beauty, the miracle Of just plain
| yprolms. wh ch reused us to see things
we didn't see, which made things happen
before our startled eyes that never hap
pcncd; which took us straight out of the
dry safety Of tho Rivoli, buffeted US with
tnat wind and drove US with that rain
and maybe dizzicd US a littlc--moro
power to it!
Well, look at tho storm and look at
tho nice, sleek, handsome, absolutely
first class and hard as nails rest Of tho
picture. and sec TO what sort OF thing
Mr.. Tourncur conscicntiously stoops and
what it IL no rises to. And then ask
yourself II it is not gay day for pict-
urcs that the papers announce hc a to
do Stevenson and Conrad "Vctory"
and "Trcasure Island" If you haven't
! forgotten the treasures Of that island
doesn't such an announccmcnt---si since
you care about pictures doesn't it make
you about wsll-aYict0ry"'