"It is melodrama of the most thrilling sort, in spite of the fact that
there is a moral concealed in the very title of the play. But who is
worried by a moral in a play which has an exciting hand-to-hand fight
between a man and a woman in one of the earliest acts, when the quick
march of events ranges from a wedding to a murder and an automobile
abduction scene that breaks all former speed-records. 'The Cause' comes
in most symbolically and poetically, a symbolic figure that 'fades out'
at critical periods in the plot. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the famous
suffrage leader, appears personally in the film.
"'Your Girl and Mine' is a big play with a big mission built on a big
scale. It is a whole evening's entertainment, and a very interesting
evening at that." Here endeth the newspaper notice. Compare it with the
Biograph advertisement of Judith in chapter six.
There is nothing in the film that rasps like this account of it. The
clipping serves to give the street-atmosphere through which our Woman's
Suffrage Joan of Arcs move to conquest and glory with unstained banners.
The obvious amendments to the production as an instrument of persuasion
are two. Firstly there should be five reels instead of six, every scene
shortened a bit to bring this result. Secondly, the lieutenant governor
of the state, who is the Rudolf Rassendyll of the production, does not
enter the story soon enough, and is too James K. Hacketty all at once. We
are jerked into admiration of him, rather than ensnared. But after that
the gentleman behaves more handsomely than any of the distinguished
lieutenant governors in real life the present writer happens to remember.
The figure of Aunt Jane, the queenly serious woman of affairs, is one to
admire and love. Her effectiveness without excess or strain is in itself
an argument for giving woman the vote. The newspaper notice does not
state the facts in saying the symbolical figure "fades out" at critical
periods in the plot. On the contrary, she appears at critical periods,
clothed in white, solemn and royal. She comes into the groups with an
adequate allurement, pointing the moral of each situation while she
shines brightest. The two children for whom the contest is fought are
winsome little girls. By the side of their mother in the garden or in the
nursery they are a potent argument for the natural rights of femininity.
The film is by no means ultra-æsthetic. The implications of the clipping
are correct to that degree. But the resources of beauty within the ready
command of the advising professional producer are used by the women for
all they are worth. It could not be asked of them that they evolve
technical novelties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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