With His Hands (1914)

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Marc McDermott | Barry O’Moore | Charles Brabin (Director)

Rest of cast:

Miriam Nesbitt | Marjorie Ellison | Harry Linson | Joseph Manning | Floyd France | George D. Melville | Warren Cook | Richard Washburn Child (Writer)

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Serial: The Man Who Disappeared (1914)

Episodes:

1. The Black Mask (1914)
2. A Hunted Animal (1914)
3. The Double Cross (1914)
4. The Light on the Wall (1914)
5. With His Hands (1914)
6. The Gap (1914)
7. Face to Face (1914)
8. A Matter of Minutes (1914)
9. The Living Dead (1914)
10. By the Aid of a Film (1914)

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“With His Hands.”

Fifth of the Edison Series in “The Man Who Disappeared.”

Reviewed by Louis Reeves Harrison.

Cast.
John Perriton, alias “John Pottle”… Marc MacDermott
Jennie… Marjorie Ellison
President Carter… Harry Linson
Mr. Earle, Superintendent… Joe Manning
Mr. Brownson, a detective… Floyd France
Mr. O’Rourke. foreman… George Melville
The Police Inspector… Warren Cook

Extraordinary in showing how skillful treatment can occasionally provide interest when it seems to be lacking in the scenario, With His Hands will set the nerves of the uninitiated on edge and puzzle not a few who are familiar with methods of production. Every incident of the story leads up to a struggle between two desperate men on the top girders of an incomplete skyscraper in the lower part of New York City, with a background no studio in the world could realistically reproduce. But even this realism is subordinate to a new pattern of background which will delight the eyes of all who behold it.

The stage director may sit down and sketch a design historically accurate or containing certain intrinsic elements of beauty, but the motion picture director can sweep the seas, scale mountain crags, or even ascend into tiny heavens for his effects. Director Brabin [Charles Brabin] has taken us to the top of a tall building in lower New York from which there are amid views of East River bridges, of tiny Woolworth and Singer towers, of the city from an elevated viewpoint, even to an elevated train winding far below on its devious course.

He has brought into harmony the scenes, characters and of the drama to be pictured. The struggle in midair, though we know it to be acting, is now so perfectly in tune with the wondrous background that it acquires an actual thrill from its intense realism. One can scarcely help thinking that the performers are taking terrible chances in enacing their roles, so cleverly placed are the scenes, outranking any others of the kind ever shown in moving pictures. It seems almost a pity to have such treatment lavished on a story so lacking in intrinsic novelty. It is the outworn narrative of the honest workman and villainous boss with a detective thrown in for good measure on the villainy side. The detective schemes a frame-up on the honest workman where the “goil” can hear every word of it — all stage schemers are overheard — and the “goil” foils the villain, the kind of story that is founded on one of Yorick’s six plots, made while you wait.

Fine treatment elevates it to a picture story of strong interest, thanks entirely to the accomplished director and his company, not excluding the camera man.

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Scene from With His Hands (Edison).

Collection: Moving Picture World, May 1914