User Reviews

This reviewer has yet to see a picture by Madame Blaché that was not sincerely and artistically directed and this, "The Adventurer," one of her recent productions is no exception. The plot by Upton Sinclair is a stirring but artfully constructed melodrama and the picturization of it is wholesome, full of mystery, and most decidedly entertaining. It is modern and up to date without attempting to teach us or assuming that we need to be taught. It sets out to make an hour and a half or thereabouts pass pleasantly for those who are willing to pay the admission and it will accomplish its purpose often before it is put with the "pictures of other days." Marian Swayne plays the lead and as the story opens is trying to make a living honestly in a cruel city. That's a good beginning and it is registered convincingly and pleasingly. Pell Trenton has the opposite lead. We are led to believe he is a crook. We suspect that he is the son of the millionaire, but he turns out to be a crook before our eyes so persistently that we doubt our suspicions, until the reasons are uncovered in the denouement and we understand. Around these two juveniles, there are the usual "characters" most of them wicked enough, but all played with the peculiarities of humanity so pleasing in plots that bother only with the square blocks of good and evil. There is none of them so ably put over as Charles Halton's "Austin," the distributor of charities for the big villain (Kirk Brown) who is stealing a fortune. The world thinks that the millionaire has disinherited his son and daughter to found a charity institution with Kirk at its head; but the right will is in the safe and is produced in time. Most of the action transpires in the slums, where Pell finds Marian about to commit suicide and befriends her. She thinks him a thief and is reforming him. He the son and heir is on an adventure in which he succeeds in uncovering Kirk's conspiracy. Ethel Stanard plays as Pell's sister. Tolande Doquette plays a slum character. Martin Hayden plays one of the villain's accomplices. – The Moving Picture World, February 24, 1917