The Film Spectator, Vol. 5

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Excerpt from The Film Spectator, Vol. 5: March December, 1928It is a Pola Negri picture, one Of four in which Lee has directed her. The first of the series, Barbed Wire, I put on my list of ten best pictures of last year. It had what Secret Hour lacks - a great background. An orange grove is not as impres sive a background as the world war, and it is in an orange grove that most of the action Of Secret Hour takes place. Perhaps more than any other American director, Lee has a grasp of European psychology, and makes pic tures with European settings seem real when they reach the screen. And European settings have more pictorial possibilities than American settings. Over there things are Old and massive, and the cities have not the mathe matical premsxon of ours. That is why most of our big pictures have foreign locales. A Seventh Heaven, 8 Barbed Wire or a Four Sons would have lost a great deal of its pictorial attractiveness if it had been laid in this country. All this is by way 'of preface to the statement that although it is strong in drama, Secret Hour will be considered a small Negri picture. It is an intimate story of three people, a screen version of They Knew What They Wanted, a play that was presented in only a few places, consequently not many people will share my disappoint ment over the fact that the picture lacks the punch of the play, an emasculation that was necessary to make it suit able for screen purposes. I am sorry that I saw the play, for I like to take my pictures straight, not with a dash of memory of what they might have been. In the play the girl who is about to become a mother is not married, which is more intriguing than the picture has it. In Secret Hour a justice of the peace mumbles words that are not dramatic enough to compensate for the drama of which they rob the story. But Secret Hour is a good pic ture, measured by any standard. Miss Negri gives a splendid performance. She plays an American girl whom we encounter first as a waitress in a cheap restaurant. Later she goes to the orange ranch to marry Jean Her sholt, an Italian, who owns it. Jean wooed her by mail.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.