The First Commandment (1915)
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Austin Webb | Tom Moore | Marguerite Courtot | Tom Moore (Director)
Rest of cast:
Robert Ellis | Lowell Randall Stark | Marie Wells | William Calhoun | Richard Purdon | Charlotte Courtot | Harry O. Hoyt (Writer)
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“The First Commandment”
Fine three-reel drama of Money God’s rule and how it was broken — carefully made story, exceptional offering.
Reviewed by Hanford C. Judson.
This is the first of the three-act stories that the Kalem Company is releasing on Fridays. It is a picture full of substance and high merit, promising well for other offerings of this series. The author is Harry O. Hoyt and the tale appeared first in The American Woman. Put on the screen by Tom Moore, the humanity of it is made to come out strong by skillful acting. The cast, with a single doubtful exception, is happily chosen and the characters are doubly pleasing on account of their convincing as well as attractive presentation. Among the many excellently drawn human entities it is hard to be sure where the honors lie; but, of this, one can be certain, that Marguerite Courtot, as the money worshiper’s daughter, has as far as this reviewer can see, outdone herself. She has been doing praiseworthy work; but it is plain that she is growing very speedily into an actress of more than ordinary power. She has in this picture drawn a young girl, simple, fresh and lovable on whose heart strings the changing situation plays as on a harp notes of true-hearted filial and sisterly comradeship and sympathy, full of minor chords and joyous strains, moments of pleading, tears, laughter and love. That early scene by her father’s chair in its delicacy and its girlhood is perfect, but not more so than the scene in which she receives her first foolish lover, who is a joke to her. There is no lost sympathy and no petulance; she packs him off just as a girl of that kind would. The highest kind of humor is in it…
The foolish boy, son of her father’s business rival, is played by Lowell R. Stark [Lowell Randall Stark], and is “in character” all the way, although it has been impossible for the actor to disguise his eyes and forehead that show him as, in actuality, of a diametrically different kind.
Austin Webb, as the rich man, carries his stage business with the assurance of the finished actor, and the scenes in which he contends with his more or less dissolute son (Tom Moore), who marries a stage woman (Marie Wells), are full of convincing and restrained playing by all concerned.
Robert Ellis, who plays the accepted lover of the girl, is acceptable, yet seems to find some difficulty in keeping within the measure of his part and in tune with the story — there is little romance in him.
William Calhoun, as the business rival of the rich man, who tries to force him to bring about a marriage with his foolish son, has a role that is in the background.
There is nothing startling or new in the plot; but it amply justifies its use in a three-reel picture, its chief merit being that it furnishes many unusually human scenes. One may suspect that the quality of the whole comes largely from the players and their director. The staging and photography are all that one could want.
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Scene from The First Commandment (Kalem).
Collection: Moving Picture World, March 1915