The Pillars of Society

This is a very interesting picture of Ibsen's drama of the same name. The parts of Johan Tonneson and of Bernick are particularly well acted; but the whole company was well-chosen and does credit to the Thanhouser producer. On the whole, this ambitious film is amply successful, though the story is extremely hard to understand till two or three scenes have passed. There are two stories of love interwoven, but they do not seem so important as the representation of the facility with which a man, looked up to and respected, lived a lie. Ultimately, the innocent man is cleared of suspicion. The guilty one is forced by his chastened conscience to confess. His wife forgives him, and the second love story reaches a happy ending. - The Moving Picture World, May 20, 1911

Ibsen's play about the revelation of truth and the destruction of shameful lies is brought to the movie screen by Thanhouser. It was one of three Ibsen plays his company adapted to the screen in 1911; Edwin Thanhouser had staged it in Chicago shortly before he founded his film company.

Ibsen's play takes place at the time of revelation, offering the chance for the Aristotlean unities of time and space to take place. However, in the play, the older events are spoken of. That would require far more titles, which was uncinematic; the events had to be shown. At other companies, the events might have been shown in a flashback, or in a small portion of the screen. Thankhouser preferred to show the events in chronological order. This, alas, has the result of disrupting the revelatory nature of the play, and ends in compressing the current events into half a reel, during which titles explain what we are about to see, and then the cast reacts in a most theatrical manner.

It's hard to blame the producers from adopting this rather dull method. Even in 1911, a third of a century after the first performance, this was a shocking play; today we might snigger at the naivetee of its audience that it implies.

Despite these knocks, there's no faulting the technical prowess of Thanhouser's cameramen, costumes, sets and designs.