A Siren of Impulse

Early last summer, the Biograph Company released a very excellent picture, "The New Dress." This release has much of the same quality. It is true that the former had, in some ways, a more significant incident to relate and was more universal in its humanity. It also was more distinctly national in its ancillary happenings, in its atmosphere. This picture, however, has many good points to commend it, points that are found in both. It is not quite so successful a picture; but it invites comparison. They belong together. The heroine of this one is an impulsive Mexican girl and later a married woman. Her peculiarities have made her husband intensely jealous; yet she is perfectly true and submissive to him, is even more good-hearted than the usual man or woman and it is really through this good nature that the situation came. She had loaned her finery to another girl, because her husband refused to let her go to a dance. A sick neighbor needed her care. Her husband came back and found her gone. From a distance, he saw her dress. In the moonlight, there came near being a tragedy; but this was averted and everything explained. The picture's fine quality comes in the acting which, in many of its scenes, is quite up to Biograph standards. The photographs, some of them more especially, are unusually commendable. It is a desirable feature. - The Moving Picture World, March 16, 1912