Victims of Persecution

This well-meaning but incredibly muddled short feature -- it looks to have been about half an hour until eked out by the interpolation of a travelogue about kibbutzim in Palestine and a short silent film about two lovers, one royal, the other Jewish, who commit suicide in a variation of the story of Esther -- is about a Jewish judge who is up for a nomination for governor, but the trial he is presiding over, apparently of a Black man falsely accused of murder, is producing a lot of threats on his life. Meanwhile his father is coming back from Palestine for a visit and his daughter is being pursued by two men.

It would give me great pleasure to rate this considerably higher, but the actors are clearly uncertain about how to act in front of the camera. In fact, Bud Pollard the actor seems to be watching the camera in a rather wary fashion in the early scenes, which Bud Pollard the director may not have caught. More a curio than a a worthwhile movie, it would be interesting to find out what silent movie they added in.