Not a bad effort for its era. People seeing the audience reaction in "Singin' In the Rain" are seeing an anachronism.That would be the reaction of a 1950 audience used to perfected talking pictures.But for audiences accustomed to silent movies,even imperfect sound was marvelous,making complicated plots like this far more practical than with silents. As others said, Henry Walthall and Ricardo Cortez give very professional performances. The film of course is "stagy", partly due to the limitations of sound equipment at the time but more due to the type of story it was.Even later efforts like"The Mask of Demetrius" were just about as stagy because of the nature of the plot. For one thing, this and other movies allow us to see basically what a stage melodrama of the period was like,something almost impossible to completely duplicate today,because todays actors simply didn't grow up in that old tradition. Still, the sets are very interesting, and it is somewhat filmic, allowing scenes and shots such as closeups that stage can't provide, so it is better than merely a filmed stage play. All in all a rather interesting movie.
Review of The Phantom in the House
