Reviews

All of MODERN LOVE has been rediscovered and restored, and it is a delight. Universal assigned this film to very second-tier technical personnel - Arch Heath's career was mostly directing shorts, this was cinematographer Jerome Ash's second "A" feature after William Wyler's excellent THE SHAKEDOWN (1929), and the sometimes crude synchronized score was by Bert Fiske, musical director for Universal's first all-talkie, the flop MELODY OF LOVE (1928) - so it's likely that Heath gave Chase his head and let him assume most of the direction. (This hypothesis is reinforced by including fellow Roach comedienne Anita Garvin in the cast.) For the most part it is a typical Chase situation comedy of embarassment, but it builds gag by gag to a hilarious sequence where Chase deliberately sabotages a dinner party featuring Jean Hersholt as the guest of honor who is unfamiliar with American dining "customs".

When Chase finally speaks (quite late in the film) and sings what must have been the film's theme song, "You Can't Buy Love", his dialogue is slightly stilted at first, but he delivers it quite naturally and in the characteristic way of his later films for Roach; in fact, some of it is quite funny. (Oddly, "You Can't Buy Love", which is attractive and beautifully sung by Chase, was never published.) The confrontational role-play dialogue between Chase and Katherine Grant concerning their respective careers and "traditional" marriage values is believable and amusing, but the film ends in a surprising but wonderfully ambiguous way that respects both characters.

It is a terrible shame that this was Chase's only true starring feature, because it shows he really could carry feature films with ease; it's even more impressive that the film works so well in its difficult part-talkie hybrid form, as many similar films of its time are not very effective today. In many ways it's a tighter and lighter-feeling film than most of Laurel & Hardy's features (save SONS OF THE DESERT) as Chase has a little more time to give more dimension to his character beyond that in his usual two-reel comedies. MODERN LOVE is still a pleasing and funny film to watch even with its technical sound limitations, which is a marked achievement.

I had to accompany this film once 4 years ago. I was assigned to play it because it was thought I could get this horror "over the hump" and make it tolerable. I did my best with it, but aside from the blackface - which I accept as a part of American entertainment history - the film's humour was infantile, the story was hackneyed, the justification Warner Bros. Publicized at the time for making this film was idiotic, and the "comic" business given the main characters was all the more revolting for the CONCEPT of giving it to blackface actors, who played their parts in the demeaning way written into Darryl F. Zanuck's screenplay. The only faintly amusing part was a sequence early in the film with a dog actually kibitzing a poker game. Even Myrna Loy, who also appears in blackface, recollected this film with acute embarrassment; she said she only did it because it was the first leading role offered to her at Warners'. There are relics of American cinema best kept away from the public at large; unfortunately in this country (the U. S.) there are many who would find it funny because of its stereotypes and their own racism, which this film would justify and reinforce in their minds. This is without a doubt the worst film I have ever seen in my 55 years of experiencing silent films. And the Italian archive that restored it was very proud of it and intended to tour it over here! That only shows how unaware some Europeans are of our country's history and current affairs.

This is a film that should have every element reprinted on nitrocellulose stock, the safety film materials discarded, and then placed in conditions where it would quickly rot.

John Collins was a brilliant director whose rapidly rising career was cut short when he died within three days at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York of "Spanish influenza" on 23 October 1918, while his wife Viola Dana (who stars here) was on a train to California expecting her husband to follow her. Edison had just begun releasing full-length features in earnest in 1915, and this is an especially elaborate production. Dana is very appealing and credible in her role, and the horrific fire finale (which was staged by filling an abandoned factory with waste nitrate film and setting it ablaze) still impresses - it almost reached cameraman Ned van Buren's platform and the fumes nearly overwhelmed him. Collins's narrative technique isn't as smooth as it would become, but the story is compellingly told with no punches pulled and is superior to many extant 1915 features. This is not an "ordinary moralistic melodrama", but a film with substantial life to it, especially when screened with a live audience.