The Days of Terror; or, In the Reign of Terror

A romantic picture of the French Revolution from the aristocratic viewpoint; it chooses a duke and duchess for its hero and heroine, while its villain is a minion of Robespierre. There are scenes of palace life and of life in the underworld of the Parisian slums. Mr. Chas. Kent is the duke; Julia Swayne Gordon is the duchess; Mr. Delany plays the villain's part; Miss Leah Baird plays the lead in the counterplot; is his low sweetheart who stabs him because of his intrigue to get the beautiful duchess. In one scene, the mob, attacking the duke's palace, gave a decided thrill. It is a good picture; not because of its plot, but because of its characters and good acting. It has good photography. - The Moving Picture World, June 29, 1912

THE DAYS OF TERROR is a French Revolution melodrama about a duke and duchess menaced by a lecherous revolutionary-- quite a reversal from the usual presentation of the aristocracy preying upon innocent peasant women. The story is the usual Scarpia ultimatum stuff you'll find in this kind of thing, but there are some interesting cinematic flourishes for a movie of 1912. Most striking is a shot where the duke and duchess cower in the foreground as the peasants rush toward them and the camera-- it feels quite modern compared to most one-reelers of the time, which were still keeping action relatively stagebound.

Duke Charles Kent has a complaining peasant thrown out the front door of his castle. This incites the Reign of Terror, proving you should always thrown peasants out the servant's entrance. Leo Delaney, who seems to be despised by the nobility for his shiny pants, offers Kent's wife, Julia Swayne Gordon, both their lives in return for some unspecified but doubtless ignoble reward; but Kent refuses this with a dismissive wave of his hand.

I side with Mark Twain in his closing segments of A CONNECTICUT YANKEE that the nobility had been building up to the Reign of Terror for a thousand years, at the rate of a hogshead of baseborn blood for each drop of their own. I also think that Charles Kent as a director had his players perform in the broadest style imaginable. This makes it hard for me to take any of this seriously. Still, I have to admire the set design and the elegant period costumes.