Her Defiance

Her brother wants Cleo Madison to marry old and rich Willis Marks. She loves Edward Hearn, a businessman from the big city. When he is called back home, he writes her a note saying he will return, but it is never delivered. When Miss Madison discovers she is pregnant, she must make some hard choices.

This two-reel drama was co-directed by Miss Madison (one of eighteen she directed from 1914-1918) and Joe King, an actor who directed two movies; I suspect Mr. King handled the scenes in which Miss Madison appeared (most of them), since directing yourself is not easy.

It's a nice potboiler for the popular Universal star.The outdoor settings are good-looking, there's some nice cross-cutting while the lovers are parted, and a lovely shot of Miss Madison staring pensively out a train window. It's by no means an important or key movie, but like all well-made efforts, it's very much worth looking at, for a rare survivor of the many thousands of lost contemporaries.

I'm afraid I must disagree with the reviewer who called this film "a potboiler." Although the basic outlines of the plot--country girl meets city lad, and trouble ensues with their respective families--are standard, the way the young woman reacts to her situation is anything but. It was quite unusual in 1914 for women, even onscreen, to defy social mores in the way that the heroine does here. Her reaction to a wedding scene is completely unprecedented in film (and unfollowed--compare it to a similar scene in "The Princess Bride").

Mostly the film is well-made by 1916 standards; I had a few quibbles with some of the makeup (even considering the conventions of the day). The actors all do pretty well, the photography is very competent, and the setting is interesting, though sometimes in ways that were unintended--an elevator in an office building fascinated me far beyond what the filmmakers could ever have expected.

Trivialities: there was one intertitle that I thought seemed inaccurate about the timeline of the story, and one dramatic incident appeared truncated--perhaps a piece of the film is missing. The dates within the film, on telegrams and such, are all written as 1914, intriguingly, but the trade publications of the day put the release date in 1916.