New-York tribune., 1919-04-27
No Theory Proof
Against Destruction

escape. The picture is Eravely and
austerely done, with the hardest re-
aism as to the poor and almost earth
trodden folk it deals with, but having
the fullest sense of the spacious
stretches of forest and mountain
against which it works itself out, if
not in days photography at least in
close yesterdays. With no struggle
for variety or comedy relief, without
being fused up by fine feathers and
fine motives, by pretty touches or any
self-conscious tricks whatever, without
an inch Of padding or even the slight
est visible effort to please, it concerns
itself solely with the Dang of a few
violent hours, IN which the characters
and the countryside, the incidents and
their acting are all blended in one
dark, wilful mood, as they might have
been blended by the darkness Of
storm; it fills the window Of our sight
with single dramatic gesture and is
gone. Isn't this the result Of it's being
Il two-rcclcr?
another, but, alas, unidentified two
reclcr; the first we ever recognized as
conscious art. A young laborer and
his wife, housekeeping joyfully in two
rooms, have q daily moment especially
dear when as he comes home from
work he looks up to see her sitting
sewing IN tho kitchen window and
waves his hand. But when a strike
has been on a long time every nerve
in those two rooms comes to be on
edge Still, it is only when the wolf
ls at the door that the wife brings
forward some money she has secretly
earned by doing washing. He has al
ways been so proud Of providing for
her with his own money that she
shrinks from telling him how she came
by this. Once she sees some jealous
suspicion in him she sticks to her re-
fusal, herself growing angrier and
angricr IN the quarrel from which he
Aings out of the house and which
brings him toward the end of the day
to a saloon for comfort. From the
drink and the exhaustion of his misery
he drops asleep, and in his sleep in a
confused and dreadful anger he seems
to track his wife to her meeting with
some rich stranger, and to contrive a
horrible plan. He gives his wife time
to get home, makes his own way there
through the hot summer night, steals
across the dark living room, sneaks
open the door of the lamp-lit kitchen
full, somehow, of heat and strain,
oppressed with foreboding and sees
her sitting by their window, just as
she, used to do. In the dark internal
obsesson in which he moves this is
the last straw; in the struggle between
them her scissors drop at his feet and
with these he kills her. She falls into
that very chair again oy that very win
dow, with her head lying back as if
tired, as he has seen her a hundred
times.
He throws the scissors violently
from him and with the vigor of the
gesture he awakes. But the relief is
not so vivid as the dream, the press.
ure Is still wild and heavy in his
heart, and terrified by what he can
neither believe nor quite disbelieve
that he has done, he again makes his
way home through the hot night, gets
himself through the dark living room,
and pushes open the kitchen door;
there is the lamp-lt room again,
there is the figure of his wife in the
chair by the window with her sewing
in her lap, her head lying back as if
tired, and there on the floor at her
teet lie her scissors. He cannot move
one step nearer her, but at the sound
in his throat she opens her eyes and.
turning her tear-stained face to him.
I holds out one arm. There was no
truth in the dream at ALL Frankly.
this seems to us quite perfect. But
what would it be in a hve-reel pro-
duction?
This IS not an attack on five-reelers.
or twelve reelers, old pictures or
new, but on the folly of binding ones
self-in the most flexible of all medi-
ums except music--to any one per-
suasion; on the idea that, except in
comedies, the dramatic part of film
programme must be ten reels, split
into two pictures of five reels each
no more and no less; on any stand
ardlzatlon. Standardlzation--the the
word chokes usl But only temporar
lily, of couracl