Caught in the Rapids

Quebecois logger Edgar Jones loves Edna May Sperl, and spends his spare time eating oysters to find pearls to make necklaces for her and crocheting wicker baskets for her. She, however, loves vacationing chauffeur Carlton Brickert, who's sophisticated enough to wear a bow tie while fishing. Miss Sperl, enraptured at the prospect of becoming a dazzling urbanite, hugs trees and goes canoeing without a paddle. Who will rescue her from the raging white water, and what reward will he claim?

It's one of those rockribbed shorts which hold it as self evident that these city fellows may be all right but for true nobility you can't beat a country boy. The acting is long on the arm-waving, particularly on the part of the loggers, who seem ready to raise three cheers at any excuse, including lunch.

There's some good camerawork by Eugene French.

Edgar Jones stars (he also produced and directed) as a Maine lumberman in love with a local girl (Edna May Sperl) who's something of a wood nymph. She's always adorned with flowers. He showers her with gifts but when she meets a local chauffeur (Carlton Brickert), it's love and first sight. Jones is teased by the gang leader (Ben Hendricks) and the woods crew for being dopey in love and weaving a basket during his "nooning" (lunch break).

One day Sperl takes a canoe out on the river and when she spies a grove of lilacs, she has to have them. She goes ashore and picks them all, filling the canoe with a bower of flowers. Back on the river, she discovers she's left the paddle onshore. Just then the river's current takes hold and she's rushed toward the gorge rapids. Can she be saved?

Typical story for the "North Woods" films Jones produced, directed and starred in at his Augusta, Maine studio. He made dozens of them. This story is from Holman Day, a Maine novelist who briefly partnered with Jones. Perhaps most striking here is the Maine landscape nicely photographed by Eugene French.

The film is a forerunner of Maine's first feature film, THE RIDER OF THE KING LOG (1922) based on Day's novel and produced by Jones. While Jones and Sperl were initially announced for the leads, they did not appear in the feature. I suspect the friction between Jones and Day came to a head and Jones (and Sperl) departed for New York. Day soon went out of the movie business.