Plustown
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Deanna
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
beck-bob
The film was shown in November at the annual Lillian and Dorothy Gish Film Festival in Massillon, Ohio (the Gish home town). It was a newly restored print and featured an extraordinarily energetic and adventurous piano accompaniment for its entire eighty minutes. As a silent picture, it had very good performances. Robinson, then only thirty years old, was given a mustache and goatee and aged to look sixty. Was Mary Astor ever seventeen?? She was in this film and looked beautiful as Robinson's daughter. Barthelmess and Dorothy Gish were fine romantic leads, and William Powell villainous as a Cuban officer. The plot is rather involved, with spies, secret messages, and gun running amongst the Cuban patriots and Spanish army. Finally seeing this film made me marvel at the craftsmanship and detail given to such works in the cinema -- eighty years ago! (The actual film debut of Robinson was seven years earlier in 1916 as an extra in "Arms and the Woman," as revealed via an unmistakable still in the book, "The War, the West, and the Wilderness," by Kevin Brownlow.)
