The Safety Curtain

Way back in my university days, I happily served on the film selection committee for the uni film society. Just about every term, we booked The Covered Wagon, The Lost World and Hands Up! from the local Kodascope Library. Thinking that the Library might have other features to interest our members, the committee took a look at The Moonstone, The Wonderful Chance, The Safety Curtain, Captain January, Flesh and Blood, Are Parents People?, The Pony Express and Ella Cinders.

Needless to say, although we were blown away by the special effects in The Wonderful Chance and loved Colleen Moore's Ella Cinders, the movie that impressed us the most was, unexpectedly, The Safety Curtain, which we booked simply because the title aroused our curiosity. If we had read a synopsis of the story beforehand, we wouldn't have considered it at all, because the plot reads like pure melodrama. But that's not the way it is played or directed. The acting from all four principals is so natural and life-like that the taut story itself seems absolutely true-to-life.

Furthermore, Norma Talmadge radiates an undeniable charisma. And she and the other players are well served by Sidney Franklin's surprisingly inventive and skillful direction, which is further enhanced by entrancingly attractive sepia-tinted photography. A large budget also helps keep interest at the highest level. In all, a masterpiece of movie artistry!

THE SAFETY CURTAIN (1918) stars Norma Talmadge as Puck, a "dainty dancer" married to a brutish strong man (Anders Randolph) who starts a fire in a theater during which the safety curtain drops, containing the fire. Talmadge is rescued by a visiting military man (Eugene O'Brien), who falls in love with her and takes her away to India. Of course she thinks the husband is dead after reading an article in the newspaper listing the victims (which includes her). She goes off and lives a happy live in India until a gossipy guy she new in the States (Gladden James) recognizes her at a social function. And who should show up next?

Talmadge and O'Brien are quite good in this neat little film, which has a surprisingly intricate plot for a 60-minute film. The intertitles are very talkie and the florid script used is sometimes hard to read. Talmadge and O'Brien starred in 11 films together between 1917 and 1925.