The Dream Woman (1914)

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Fraunie Fraunholz | Claire Whitney | Alice Guy (Director | Producer | Writer)

Rest of cast:

Joseph Levering | Vinnie Burns | Wilkie Collins (Novel)

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“The Dream Woman”

A sensational picture of Wilkie Collins’ hair-raising novel made by Madame Blaché with marvelous art.

Reviewed by Hanford C. Judson.

The effect of real sensations when artistically produced is tremendous. Wilkie Collins was a master of the sensational and his popularity was and is immense. In this picture of The Dream Woman, which is to be distributed by The Box Office Attraction Film Rental Company and which was produced by Madame Blaché, the startling, terrific story is adequately illustrated. It is an offering of the get-hold-and-keep-hold-of-you kind from its opening to the close of its fourth reel, where it ends with an apt quotation from Shakespeare. One has to wonder how it was accomplished and why it is that all pictures are not also as effective.

It must be admitted that the producer and writer of this picture started with a first class subject; the story is full of action. But no story is a picture scenario until it is truly visualized and the scheme set down so that it can be followed. Collins, in writing the story, had to discard much material that would not have been helpful in the final effect he desired. In making the picture, the producer has discarded all except what she needed for her peculiar effect. But the telling quality of the picture comes most from the fact that, by the mysterious alchemy of art she had changed what material she did use into something her own, fresh, new, life-like, of today. The really big thing about the picture is that no one can tell that there was any part of it that interested her less than any other part. It is even. There are scenes in it that inspire more awe than others — take that old inn as a picture of loneliness, dreary and forlorn; take those snowy fields into which poor Francis is driven after the landlord sends him out, what a terrible “blasted heath” effect they have — but there is no scene in it that isn’t just as adequate as any, to carry the part of the weird tale that it sets forth. It is a picture in which minute details have been considered. And its producer hasn’t given us a chance to say, “Oh this is only a picture after all.” We don’t say anything while it is on, we just watch.

One hardly knows whether the story that it pictures really happened or whether someone in the picture’s characters didn’t dream it. The vague touch that the producer has given it all will keep the spectator wondering whether, as Shakespeare says, he himself isn’t really of the “stuff that dreams are made on,” or that perhaps he himself has dreamed it. All this puts it in the realm of the unsubstantial and keeps it, in spite of the horrific things it shows, from being rough. The tale is told by a groom to his employers and the final episode, which buttresses the man’s story with an account of his death weirdly in line with his morbid fears, is pictured as a witness’ account at the time of the trial; yet even that takes us out into the open spaces and leaves us, like the rope of the East Indian fakir, pointing upward, not supported by anything and filled with a sense of mystery.

The groom, so he tells his employers, is in dread of being killed on his birthday, which falls on the first of March, and by a woman who has been his wife. The strange beginning of it all lies in a dream in which he sees the woman. He hasn’t as yet met her, but he lies down asleep in a lonely country inn, and in the middle of the night she comes, a dream woman, with a knife and stabs where he has been lying. His shouts disturb the house and he gets turned out of doors. She appears to him again on a snowy waste outside. When he tells his mother and his aunt of this, they too are distressed by it, making it seem as though there is more to it than to an ordinary dream. Then he forgets it and later meets the woman in person. She attracts and yet repels him; yet her power over him is such that he marries her. Their life isn’t happy. She drinks heavily and one day in a fury he strikes her. She tries to stab him and he takes the knife from her; but she warns him that she will stab him yet and with the identical knife. He has a queer adventure with highwaymen, in which he is robbed and also loses the knife. He begins to dread every birthday and gets a job as groom in another country and it is to his new employers that he tells what it is that he dreads.

The closing part, which shows how he came to be bedridden on his next birthday and how the dream woman or the actual woman got her chance to “get” him is quite convincing. No one will be likely to think of any better ending nor carry away the feeling that it is only a show, and by no means real. The reason for the latter lies in the producer’s art.

The only part of the production that it would be safe to criticise is the acting which, although it is better than the average all through, isn’t absolutely even. There is no part of it that fails to get the story over, but now and then art is more apparent in the work of the players than nature. It is like watching marksmen shooting at a target — a bullet hits the center now and then, and now and then there is a mark in the outside rings reminding us that it is possible to miss. No player in the picture fails to be perfect at times and no player in it is perfect with outbreak all the time. The leads are carried by Fraunie Fraunholz and Claire Whitney. The photography and stagecraft are excellent. A very good offering to the public.

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Scene from The Dream Woman (Blaché)

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Collection: Moving Picture World, March 1914