I saw this screened at the Bay City/Saginaw show, and although I was skeptical and even jaded about it while I was watching it, the imagery, the atmosphere, and the intensity of the subject (not to mention of the performances) provided me with my most powerful memories of the festival. Barrymore is not a dapper figure here, but his appeal and his talent for projecting smoldering fire is 100% intact. He is ably abetted by the angelic blonde, Camilla Horn, and the fiery, wildly uninhibited Mona Rico (a late silent discovery quickly forgotten, but who does turn up dancing a bit in John Carroll's ZORRO serial.) Horn is a delicate beauty suspiciously strung together with steel wire, while Rico goes some lengths to out-spitfire Lupe Velez, and does she ever wear a jacket? Rico's character is sooooo hot, that she is hardly ever seen wearing costuming that can contain her writhing, lusting, scheming torso. That she is supported in her efforts every step of the way by her mother is no vote for quality parenting, not by any stretch of the imagination, and Heaven help poor John. Poor, poor John. There is something about physical attraction in silent cinema, it can be obvious, nostril-flaring, eye-popping (or, as in the case of Miss Rico, breast-heaving) but when it's subtle, as with Barrymore and Horn, it can scorch the screen along with your eyes and imaginations. They are met subtlety for subtlety by the second male lead, handsome Victor Varconi, a fine actor often underused in the talking era, and are matched in color by Hobart Bosworth as Horn's Reverend father, and Bodil Rosing as their housekeeper. Evelyn Selbie, who portrays Mona Rico's horrible hag of a mother, seems to have had quite a career playing mothers in the Silents, and parlayed such roles into lesser talking picture assignments such as "Screaming woman" or "Immigrant woman," or "Tenement Woman."
Review of Eternal Love
