Buried Treasure

Exciting story about reincarnation casts Marion Davies as a current-day rich girl named Pauline prone to odd trance-like moments and a liking for "sunny Spain." Films starts with a procession of ancient times and women who have reincarnated thru the ages to become Pauline. Story then starts with Pauline dressing up for a masquerade party.

The main characters are introduced to include her parents and brother, a young doctor (Norman Kerry), and a fortune-hunting European duke. Daddy (Anders Randolf) wants Pauline to marry the duke, but she has a yen for the young (and poor) doctor. With daddy still insisting on a marriage, they all set sail on a massive yacht.

Then one night Pauline goes into a trance and starts to write in her diary but she has no idea what she's doing. When she comes to, she discovers a curious scrawl and shows her mother. Accidentally they discover the note has been written backwards. The note seems to indicate a spot where a treasure chest was buried hundreds of years ago.

They set sail toward the island. But Pauline keeps having premonitions and seeing visions. She "sees" the pirate ship mutiny in which her brother is killed and the burial of the treasure. She also sees that her father was the infamous pirate El Diablo and that her young husband is killed and buried with the treasure.

How many of these visions will come true? Is there really a treasure buried on the distant island? Based on a short story by F. Britten Austin in which the hero and heroine face a tragic ending, but since the final reel of the film is missing, we have only contemporary reviews to give us a hint at the ending.

Great production values (by Joseph Urban) and West Coast filming add a lot. Davies is terrific as usual. Randolf and Kerry are fine. Edith Shayne plays the mother, Earl Schenck the brother, John Charles plays the Duke, and Thomas Findlay plays the captain.

Over the decades I've looked at a lot of partially preserved and fragmentary bits of silent features. It's the nature of the beast, when the vast majority of them are gone. So, when Ed Lorusso announced this movie as his latest Kickstarter project, starring Marion Davies, missing the final reel, I contributed, hoping for the best, even as I feared the worst.

It was one of the cases in which the best eventuated. Most of the movie survives in excellent shape, and in a fine toned print. Enough of the the final reel exists for the story to be finished with a series of stills and titles. It's not all one would wish for -- the location shots at sea are washed out -- but the story is interesting and for 1921, it's extremely well told, typical for something four or five years later, thanks, in no small part, to set design by Joseph Urban, titles by Fred Waller, camera-work by Harold Rossen, and a skilled cast.

Marion Davies is the daughter of Anders Randolf, "The Pirate of Wall Street". He wants her to marry John Charles, a European aristocrat whose only saving grace is his title. She loves Norman Kerry, a penniless doctor, and she and her father clash over the matter. When daddy orders her to marry John Charles after they all come back from an ocean voyage, she starts to have fits, in which she starts to write things backwards in her diary that seem to lead them to buried treasure. Then, when her mother asks her to read her something, a ghost directs her to a pirate story that mirrors her own situation.

The outcome of the movie will be no surprise to anyone, but there are enough engrossing details, from a costume party in a beautiful chamber to a desperate fight against pirates, that anyone who enjoys a well done movie for its own sake will have no complaint.