Young Romance

Young Romance (1915)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Early romantic comedy directed by William C. DeMille and Cecil B. DeMille (even though the IMDb credits someone else). A poor girl (Edith Taliaferrpo) and poor boy (Florence Dagmar) work at the same department store but don't know one another. They've both got a week's vacation coming up and both decide to pretend to be rich in hopes of finding someone rich to marry them. They both end up at the same resort and eventually hook up with both thinking the other is rich. The biggest problem with this film is that, like most romantic comedies of today, the thing is just way too predictable but the star's charm keeps things going. The best scene is when the two go on a date at an expensive restaurant and the waiter keeps order the most expensive stuff on the menu not knowing the guy is poor and won't be able to pay for it.

Two young clerks in a department store meet and fall in love during a seaside vacation in Maine, but part as strangers because, unknown to each other, both had been masquerading as upper-class 'swells', just to see how the better half lives. With so much coincidence already at work it's hardly surprising when (happily) the two are reunited after their mutual charade is over, but despite an all-too convenient resolution the scenario still shows plenty of simple, unassuming charm after more than three-quarters of a century in the archives (as of the screening I attended, way back in 1987). Likewise, the film itself has been beautifully preserved, with the freshly struck, tinted print opening like a small window onto the manners and customs of a more innocent age.

Some funny situational comedy punctuates the strictly routine story, which is about trouble some beach kids (1915 style) get into when they try to spend a week away from work to pretend to be rich and carefree. Everything happens pretty fast, but there's the standard blackmail creating endless possibilities for melodrama to prevent the two's inevitable coupling until the end of the fifth reel. Pretty standard stuff from Cecil's brother Willie.