Perfectly adorable

Charming and brutal

A Disappointing Continuation

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I saw this on a DVD that was part of a collection of Valentino films. Valentino does not appear for the first ten minutes, so I jumped to the conclusion that he played a bit part and the video makers were just adding it as fuller. When Valentino did come on, I found that I was wrong. He does have a substantial part and gives a very strong performance.One thing that is really weird about the film is that Kathleen Kirkham plays the mother-in-law to Vera Sisson. Yet Kathleen was 23 years old and Sisson was 27 years old when the film was made. Kathleen is quite good in the movie. She shows a great deal of passion for Valentino.The film is nicely shot and edited with a good and effective use of close-ups to emphasize details. Especially noteworthy is a flashback within a flashback, something I have rarely seen in a film before. Kathleen tells Valentino about a time when she overhead a blackmailer talking to her husband. We flashback to the scene with the blackmailer. The blackmailer tells the husband (Edward Jobson) that he saw the husband murder a man. We then flashback to the murder of the man. We then return to the blackmailer and the husband, followed by a return to the present time and the wife talking to Valentino. It reminded me of the nesting structure of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Nearly every scene reveals great details about the time period, the cars, the mansion with the diverging staircase, a game of tennis with small rackets, even the clothes worn to the beach are fascinating to watch and capture the time period wonderfully. It gives us a nice idea how the upper class lived at this time.The plot is not outstanding, but I think it represents a well done period melodrama involving a European Count who ruins a rich man by first seducing his young wife, then blackmailing him and finally forcing his daughter into marriage. The Count proves that he is a gentleman after all by not forcing his new bride to have sex with him, but saying that he will wait until she wants to. Thus she remains a "married virgin".If it did not contain Valentino, the film would be merely interesting, but Valentino's assured and well acted performance makes it quite enjoyable.

Primitive, as one reviewer describes this film, is generous, this movie is really pathetic. The story is only driven along by the titles, after each one of which some poor excuse for a filmed scene "illustrates" what we've just read. It's the most ineptly conceived silent I've ever seen. Personally I think the best performance comes from the little lady. The stepmom's is quite odd, and I didn't get any "spark" between her and Rudy, as another reviewer did. I can't imagine this movie would have played well even in 1918. What is really kind of remarkable is that come time for the happy ending, not only does evil Rudolph get away scot free (Why? One wonders. Padded with so many superfluous bits mini flashbacks and "here's what she imagined would happen"s, it would have been simpler to use that wasted time to deal "the Count" some deserved fate.), but the really shocking thing, even for a pre-coder, is that dear old father-of-the-bride is never held accountable for a cold-blooded murder he'd committed early in his career. Absurdly, the audience is even asked to believe that this craven cow is innocent of more recent corruption charges. Evidently at all costs we can't have this "nice" old fool thrown into the pokey. In the end the happy couple rejoices at the woman's having gotten her marriage to "the Count" annulled. Funny that for the ill-playing pains to which the writer went to make the conclusion clear even to people unfamiliar with the concept of "annulment", it seems that unfortunately the author misunderstood the meaning of the word "wedlock". Maybe he'd seen dogs mating? At any rate he appears to have taken the word to mean "intercourse"!

This is the sort of over-done melodrama that must have played well at the time, but is like a hunk of cheese--over time is just starts to stink. That's because the plot, by modern standards, is just archaic--archaic and filled with way too many story elements. The only reason to see it today is if you are a fan of Rudolph Valentino, as he co-stars in it. Just don't expect a lot of magic. The plot is a twisted soap opera that includes adultery, murder, blackmail and people falling to their deaths! In addition, the plot is very, very complicated--overly complicated if you ask me.The film concerns a rather sick family. The rich father has remarried and his new wife is a slut who runs around on the side with a boy-toy (Valentino). The adult daughter is sweet and a bit boring by comparison and she's in love with a good, solid man. You find out that the wife is cheating, but is planning on fleecing her husband before ultimately running off to South America with her lover. But, in the meantime she has proof the husband committed a murder and convinces her boyfriend to blackmail the husband with it. Oddly, the older man doesn't seem to care about the attempted blackmail, so Valentino plans to marry the sweet young daughter in order to force the father to pay him off to get rid of him. Isn't this way overly complicated?! Why marry the girl? Don't you think the wife would be a bit upset if Valentino married her step-daughter?! And why would the young girl agree to marry him--as she ultimately does? None of this makes much sense--and yet there are many, many story gimmicks that enter the film until its conclusion.Overall, the film is hardly believable and too jam-packed full of silly story elements to be taken seriously. The acting is generally okay--but no better. I've seen a ton of silents--possibly more than anyone on IMDb, and this one is at best a mediocre film...and that's being a bit generous.

A typical pre-twenties silent melodrama centered around a main character who must sacrifice her own happiness for Duty. Here we have Mary (Vera Sisson), an ingénue who, to save her father from disgrace, gives up the man she loves to marry a blackmailing gigolo, Count Roberto (Rudolph Valentino, playing a more developed version of the "cabaret parasite" from "The Eyes of Youth"). As often happens with this sort of movie, the wicked supporting characters of the gigolo and the sly, sexy stepmother (Kathleen Kirkham)—with whom he is in cahoots and having an affair—are far more interesting than the virtuous leads. Perhaps Lillian Gish could have made prissy Mary's dilemma affecting , but as played by Sisson she comes off as a gormless twit who cannot even wade into ankle deep seawater to retrieve a rambunctious toddler. As the teaser title implies, the marriage between the gigolo and the prig stays unconsummated, everything leading up to the moment when a frustrated Roberto breaks down Mary's bedroom door (surely what the original audience went in hopes of seeing rather than Mary's noble sacrifices). She doesn't seem worth the effort, but this scene is excitingly filmed and is an interesting precursor to a similar event in "The Son of the Sheik." Valentino and Kirhham make this film worthwhile (there's a real spark between them), but try to find the restored DVD version, rather than sloppily made video production.