Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

best movie i've ever seen.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

This is a really creaky film that will be of interest only to hardcore Rudolph Valentino fans. The plotline is so full of inconsistencies that keeping track of them ceases to amuse after a while. Valentino is the only point of interest in an this primitive film with a maddeningly inconsistent plot. The irony of Valentino's casting in this film as a man who never gets to consummate his marriage with his virgin wife is heavy in view of his unconsummated marriage to Jean Acker in real life.