New-York tribune., 1919-03-16
By Virginia Tracy


picture acting, who is so tried by pict-
ure plays
Some one suggested that if we ever
went to see anybody except our favor
ite stars, for whom we were incapable
of thinking any play good enough, it
might work cure. "There's Little
Women,' with no star at all; it's pub
fishing statements from admirers that
in their town it drew whole houseful
of refined people. Why not 60 and see
what that would look like in New
York ?"
Little Women" has been what is
called "reverently" produced, no breath
OF life breaking through the deadly
and deadening sweetness of that sac
charine glaze. AS series of tableaux
it is lovely dream; the art direction.
as we believe it is called, aided by the
yelvety touch of the camera man has
given us interiors Of the most sensitive
charm, exteriors like engraved lyrics,
all tender bygone grace; the members
of the cast float like delightful da-
guerreotyes through a lack of story con-
struction SO complete that the screen is
merely crept over by trickles of action
that come from nowhere and lead to the
same place. Neither the books humor
nor its strong, homely feeling has been
grasped by scenario which simply
droops from deathbed to deathbed as if
glad to land at any definite base; other
wise 1t is clear only that whenever a.
young lady sits down out of doors
young gentleman springs from some
where and proposes to her. Of the two
all-important characters Laurie is so
scantily and spottily slung in that
practically he is not there at all: the
void swallows Conrad Nagel without
even seeming the fuller for the meal
and, in the rough awkwardness Of bow.
lsh 10, Dorothy Bernard IS hopelesslv
miscast-with her feminine Iittleness If
IS hard to tell what she could do with
the part except to sentimentalize and
conventionalize it as she does. It il
strange to watch the half-forgotten
John Brooke evolving as the main in
terest Of the picture; strange and well
come to see Henry Hull emerge from
stage success that ran long enough to
break the development and ossify the
style OF young actor forever vet TO
find him without one mannerism or
stlffened joint, no single step of "The
Man Who Came Back" cominc hack 70
trip up the larger and more fluent stvle
with which ne realizes Brooke's old
fashioned diffidence and dignity.
Ihe life story of family is temnt-
ing subject for the screen. but as
programme picture it is doomed from
the beginning; we know of no one but
griffith with enough sense of family
affection Gas distinguished from Christ
mas card family affection), enough
poignant genius for the COMMONPLACE
to do it at all, and if it took him twelve
reels nothing is less likely than that
any one else can do it in half the
space.
Fancy's furthest flight from little
Women" landed upon "Eye for Eyen
and somewhat belatedly avowed Nine.
Nazirnova's gifts to the screen; the
abundant lightness, spontaneity and
mobility of her gracile body and the
force and emphasis Of the darker emo
tions in her picturesque, plastic face,
sensitive also to exquisite shadings
ranging between the melancholy and
the calamitous. Facially, her happier
moods are only fussy and tricky, not
free from smirks.
AS to our scenario hunt, the earlier
reels Of Eye for Eye" are quite ex-
traordinarily vivid; their novelty is
filled with an adventurousness like a
journey into something rich and
strange; they have the unpredictable-
ness-wild, plain and authentic-of
"The Arabian Nights" Then, quite apart
from the general feeling that any pro-
duction with desert in it is gor-
geous production-so do those plains of
modulated light satisfy some longing
in us-"Eye for Eye" is gorgeously
produced. But Europe does for it.
Civilization reduces it to an alcoholic
delirium, ending in drink of milk.
Was there no splendor of desert, or at
least of Mediterranean beauty, for this
Bedouin girl to perish in? But to have
exchanged talisman with an Algerian
beggar, to have avenged the desert by
seducing the honor of a French officer.
to have been sold as slave, to have
danced in circus and been left to die
of thirst in an open grave, and then to
end as an ingenue throwing rose at
ones bridegroom-it isn't good enoughi
To achieve this striking climax the
story has serpentined it's way past
Donald Callaher's admirably real and
silly and heroic young lieutenant to all
the upholstered emotions of the Sa-
pho : Du Barry Fedora ideals, where
Nine. Nazimova follows it with ap-
parent willingness, through studied az
rangements Of ornate theatrical effect