The Signal Fire

Before I begin this review, I should note that it bears no relationship to the data in the IMDb listing, based on fragmentary inclusion in LYRISCH NITRAAT. Whether the problem is a misidentification by the the Eye Institute, where I found what purports to be the complete film, or the compilers of LYRISCH NITRAAT, who works with damaged fragments, is impossible for me to say with absolute certainty. However, I have written this review with the assumption that the Eye Institute is correct.

With the ship sinking, Captain Tefft Johnson sets his wife, Edith Storey, in a lifeboat. After he is rescued, he sets out and finds her on a desert island, living as the wife of Leo Delaney. Everyone will have to make choices.

There were two things that seem to have been far more common in the movies than in real life: lost civilizations scattered about Africa, and and desert islands with a couple of coconut trees and a shipwrecked man and woman. This surprisingly frank (for 1912) movie plays with the second trope in a fine fashion. Notice the way Edith and Leo are shot -- from behind and below -- when alone together. These shots tell what has happened in a convincing fashion and make them look like a very handsome couple, to make this a superior work.

There is no incompatibility between the appearance of fragments of a film in a collection by Lyrisch Nitraat and its inclusion in the EYE collection of films from the collection of Jean Desmet. The Lyrisch Nitraat exclusively used footage from the Desmet collection,and much of that is either in the process of restoration where this is possible or has since been restored. The film is moreover quite evidently not complete, since footage of the shipwreck, evidently too damaged to restore, is obviously missing from the beginning of the film. I assume there was also evidence of the captain's maltreatment of his wife in the earlier footage (in manner justifying her later relationship with the other man). Nevertheless although the wife does the conventional thing at the end and returns to her husband, the film is unusual in showing clear sympathy for the separated couple of lovers and he ending has a certain lyrical sadness to it. It is a great shame that the whole film does not survive because it is difficult to judge the part that remains without knowing more about the earlier relationship between the three characters.

There are several misidentifications in the Desmet collection (see Lost Horizons, A Loyal Deserter, Shipwrecked and The Poor Musician) but there is no reason that I know of to suppose that this is the case here.