FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Money hungry Edith Hardy keeps spending and spending all of her husband’s investment cash. He’s working on something huge, and wants her to cut back for a very short time while he waits for his stock to explode. But, of course she can’t go without money and still maintain her regal spot in society. So, as Treasurer, she takes the money from the Red Cross fund and invests it into another stock, which fails. With the money gone, the only thing she can do to remake the cash is to beg her admirer friend.

Cecil B. DeMille proves himself a great director here by pulling together all the right elements to tell an effective story. Wilfred Buckland’s art direction is nothing short of amazing. The set designs are elaborate and prove to be multi-faceted when combined with Alvin Wyckoff’s cinematography. The lighting is surprisingly atmospheric. Instead of simply always lighting for exposure, the scene is lit to reflect the mood of the scene. Backgrounds are cloaked in darkness and a faint glow hovers around the key objects within the room. In addition, the film itself is tinted to further convey the emotions of the scene (but mostly used to distinguish between different times of day and between interior and exterior scenes). However, this tinting is a little unnerving and off-putting when two tones are cut together. In general, the composition is better than average, but the film contains one great shot. It’s of the admirer, Haka Arakau (played by Sessue Hayakawa) in the courtroom watching the proceedings while book-ended by his cohorts.

What’s not as great is the acting. Hayakawa is functional at best and Jack Dean (playing the husband Dick Hardy – get your giggles out now, sicko) overcompensates for the lack of spoken words with exaggerated movements. Fannie Ward (Edith) does a little of the same, but mostly it’s in the eyes. She rolls them peepers all over the place. They’re big enough to make it work to some extent, and I much prefer a roaming eye to wildly moving body parts (well…on film at least).

The job gets done, nonetheless. The actors are able to convey the story quite well without the aide of audible dialogue and minimal title cards. Writers Jeanie Macpherson (formerly a prolific actress who played miniscule parts in over 100 films) and Hector Turnbull (a writer) have given us a story with a couple twists and turns. I can honestly say I didn’t expect the film to turn out the way it did. There are some problems. Obviously the stock market worked much differently back then, if you can lose the entire ten thousand dollar investment in one night. The stock didn’t just go down a little? Isn’t it still on the market at all? Also, I didn’t have much sympathy for Edith, because her husband’s request was quite reasonable. You don’t get to know the husband well enough to root for him, either, so there’s no real hero to keep it going. Despite these flaws, the movie still works. It’s what’s not on the title cards that’s most important, and the interchanges your mind makes up will probably be better than what would have been written anyway.

The movie isn’t very flattering towards Asians or towards women at all. But if you can look past the negative implications and any potential racial stereotyping by considering the time period in which it was made and it shouldn’t be too hard to enjoy.

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