Vanity is unquestionably a vice that should be crushed the moment its presence is discovered, and perhaps the axiom was never more forcibly presented than in this picture from the Biograph studio. The story is worked out with the fidelity to detail and the snap and dash for which the Biograph players are noted. The acting, too, is good, while the technical quality of the film, except m a few places, is up to the standard set by the Biograph mechanical department. Whether the moral lesson taught in sending these two people to their death because of their vanity is worth the elaborate work done on this film is a question which will be decided differently by different people, and perhaps the real answer to it will lie in the impression the story makes on the varying types of people who see it. The picture holds the attention of the audience throughout and the interest at the two climaxes, the first when the theft is discovered, and the next when the real worth of the stolen property is made known to the two who have slaved for years to pay for the lost jewels, is intense. It is but natural that both should die at the end. It could scarcely be otherwise, but this makes the picture another of those which is like a shroud. – The Moving Picture World, July 10, 1909
Review of The Necklace
