It's not really necessary to keep in mind that this movie was made at the dawn of the sound era. You don't have to keep it in mind because you'll be constantly reminded of it.
The actors pause for eons between lines and when they speak the utterances seem to roll on slowly forever. When the wife addresses the husband's back, you can go outside and take a stroll around the block while he slowly turns around and prepares a response.
"Do you expect me . . . to believe . . . . . . . . . . . . that?"
The lines are stilted and overly theatrical, as if drawn from the 1800s, a parody of the silent movie being parodied in "Singin' in the Rain." The acting is outlandishly overdone. "Oh, mother dear," sobs the young girl sobbing on her mother's shoulder. No kidding.
The story is a little complicated and not worth explaining in detail. Henry Walthall takes the rap for his wife when she murders a man trying to rape her. He sends her diagrams of his inventions from prison. She patents them and becomes rich. After fifteen years he returns home under a nom de geôle and finds his spouse distant and materialistic, while his little girl is now grown up and cute. Conflict ensues. Some critical scenes have been deleted for one reason or another.
The movie isn't without merit. We often use the expression "lockstep." Originally it didn't mean simply complete agreement on an issue. Lockstep was a method of getting a group of prison inmates from place to place, walking so close behind one another that the steps had to be simultaneous. It used to be sometimes used by hoofers on the stage too, where it was called "nesting." There is an interrogation scene in a police station that lacks any subtlety whatever but does use dramatic lighting. And the director shoots a woman making a phone call. When she hangs up, the camera goes out of focus and wobbles in for a close up of the telephone dial. Cut to a similar shot of another telephone later. It's a wonder he could move the camera at all, those blimps being what they were at the time.
If it fails as gripping drama, it succeeds as historical curiosity.
The actors pause for eons between lines and when they speak the utterances seem to roll on slowly forever. When the wife addresses the husband's back, you can go outside and take a stroll around the block while he slowly turns around and prepares a response.
"Do you expect me . . . to believe . . . . . . . . . . . . that?"
The lines are stilted and overly theatrical, as if drawn from the 1800s, a parody of the silent movie being parodied in "Singin' in the Rain." The acting is outlandishly overdone. "Oh, mother dear," sobs the young girl sobbing on her mother's shoulder. No kidding.
The story is a little complicated and not worth explaining in detail. Henry Walthall takes the rap for his wife when she murders a man trying to rape her. He sends her diagrams of his inventions from prison. She patents them and becomes rich. After fifteen years he returns home under a nom de geôle and finds his spouse distant and materialistic, while his little girl is now grown up and cute. Conflict ensues. Some critical scenes have been deleted for one reason or another.
The movie isn't without merit. We often use the expression "lockstep." Originally it didn't mean simply complete agreement on an issue. Lockstep was a method of getting a group of prison inmates from place to place, walking so close behind one another that the steps had to be simultaneous. It used to be sometimes used by hoofers on the stage too, where it was called "nesting." There is an interrogation scene in a police station that lacks any subtlety whatever but does use dramatic lighting. And the director shoots a woman making a phone call. When she hangs up, the camera goes out of focus and wobbles in for a close up of the telephone dial. Cut to a similar shot of another telephone later. It's a wonder he could move the camera at all, those blimps being what they were at the time.
If it fails as gripping drama, it succeeds as historical curiosity.