User Reviews

The silent The Three Passions is not only not lost, it's in very good condition.

Rex Ingram's The Three Passions (1928) stars Alice Terry, Ivan Petrovich, Shayle Gardner, Clare Eames, Leslie Faber, and in a bit part in a nightclub scene a very young Merle Oberon!

The film boasts solid cinematography, sets, and excellent performances by everyone involved! The "three passions" in the film are stated to be 1) ambition, 2) greed, 3) lust for power.

Rex Ingram was a stickler for creating an impressive film style, paying attention to the smallest details other directors would have missed.

The story is about a tycoon (Shayle Gardner) who had worked his way up from the docks of a ship building factory to actually owning the factory. It was his whole life's work and he looks forward to turning it over to his beloved son when he retires. His marriage is a sham. His wife openly plays around with younger men and so the tycoon's only happiness is in his relationship with his son, which is strong and loving. Ivan Petrovich plays the son very well, if a bit stoically.

There is a tragedy in the factory and a worker dies, leaving a wife and child. The tycoon's son blames himself for the death because the workers were protesting for better job conditions and not receiving them.

In his guilt he chooses to leave his jazz era life going to dances and sipping champagne with his fiancé and become a priest! His father is distraught. He tells his son's fiancé to do all she can to try and win him back.

Alice Terry plays the fiancé and does an excellent job with her character. She shows magnificently the torn emotions of a woman who wants her man back but who grudgingly admits that he is happy serving the poor and God. She starts to help out at the "mission" where he works, at first to lure him, but then to honestly help out as she herself softens and changes, admiring his new dedication.

However one night she is alone with a scar faced brute who tries to rape her. Her fiancé rescues her just in time, knocking the guy out cold. This scene has tremendous suspense because of the way Alice Terry plays it, strong yet frightened at the same time. Usually women play these kinds of scenes with simple terror, but Terry's character is so strong she fights back and uses her brain to try and outwit him.

There is a combination sad but happy ending that I won't reveal. Hopefully the film will be seen by more people soon.

Still not as great as Mare Nostrum, but a worthy endeavor by Rex Ingram with some very fine performances by the principals, especially Shayle Gardner as the father.

And no, Harpo Marx is not in the film. His footage was obviously cut. In a way it's a shame, it would have been great to see him, but he probably would have been distracting to the flow of the story.

I've got a pretty nice copy (from a private source) that has all the British intertitles, and I don't remember it being too much out-of-joint because of lacking materials, though there were some. I watched this nearly ten years ago now, and I went back to my notes and found I really, really liked it a lot.

I wrote this review of it back in 2009:

"...I watched something that really makes me excited to talk about. It's "The Three Passions" (1928), directed by Rex Ingram and starring his wife Alice Terry, along with Iván Petrovich, Shayle Gardner (who literally steals the show - he's fantastic!), Clare Eames, and others. Were I a high school teacher, and suddenly I needed to discuss the meaning of 'pathos', I think I could show this film and do a creditable job. I'm not sure I've ever seen a show where pathos is more evocative than in this film. There are moments where, in other films, it would be irony that comes about, but Ingram instead chooses to use front-on pathos to illuminate the idea of what he calls 'the three passions', namely, ambition, greed, and lust for power. What IS ironic is that the passions arose in some of these characters due to lack, such lack that the only way they saw rising above it was with these same passions, but, evidently, the passions took over. It becomes very evident in the wife of the owner of the shipyard, played by Clare Eames, in one of the finest evocations of twenties cabaret decadence I've ever seen portrayed on film. Her scenes constantly reminded me of the same kind of portrayals evident in "Pandora's Box", made the year after this in Germany. Another facet of this film which simply captivates - no matter whether you like the film and its themes or not! - is the stunning photography. The cinematographer was Léonce-Henri Burel, and his vision, no doubt taken at the instance of Rex Ingram, is breathtaking. The visuals in the shipyard capture the early twentieth century's overpowering lust for size in technology, huge revolving piston wheels made of steel and iron, men dwarfed by their own abilty to create driving forces that overshadow the very men who made them, and so forth. Burel's sense of exquisite taste - and large at that - shows in his capturing the home of the shipyard owner, too. It is magnificent in its rich detail and intricate finery. Ingram doesn't miss a trick here. The owner supposedly came from nothing, was once a dock worker, now owns the shipyard, and his home is the finest one could possibly have in England - English taste just post Victorian and Edwardian, and it's really something out of a dream. One other thing that was wholly remarkable was the group of actors chosen to play the characters in a seaman's mission where they go to get food and shelter. They looked like characters out of a Dickens novel, and not one of them was made up. They were for real. Incredible faces; noses; attitudes! Films today just don't have characters like these. The plot is altogether one of the period, too; not altogether realizable, either, one that takes the decadence of the period and tries to shake it off the shoulders of the son of the shipyard owner, a son raised in the full of it, and then turn the son into a priest! Well, this occurs, much to the chagrin - and that's definitely not the genuine word! - of his father, his girl friend and possibly fiance, and his friends at Oxford University, where the son is in his final year. The plot has holes, but it works anyway. In today's jaded world it is not realistic, but the direction and acting make up for all of that in spades. By the way, the scenes in Oxford, England are revelatory, too. Oxford Street without much traffic is nearly comical compared to what it is today. 1928 was definitely another world. Acting honors go to Shayle Gardner who plays the father and owner of the shipyard and to Clare Eames who plays his incredibly lustful, shrewish, and unfaithful wife. Both are so realistic in their portrayals as to make me wish to go back and watch them again. They were truly great. Both Iván Petrovich and Alice Terry are quite wonderful, and they are the driving force for the plot, but their characters are never as strong as the parents of the young man played by Petrovich. I could go on and on. Suffice it to say that I never cease to be amazed at the quality inherent in a Rex Ingram directed film. I'm really glad I had this opportunity. It's a rarely found or seen film..."