Shifting Sands (I) (1918) User Reviews

Slow and unbelievable melodrama.

[David-240 · 5/10 · 23 June 1999]

Before achieving super-stardom with Cecil B. De Mille, Swanson was working for Triangle making little melodramas like this one. The story is ludicrous - Gloria is a penniless artist who fends off a rape, only to land in prison when the rapist frames her for robbery. Upon release she joins the Salvation Army and meets and marries a wealthy young man. But her past returns to haunt her...

Swanson is very beautiful, but her talent is little utilized in this twaddle. Her leading man is uninteresting and the story slow moving and over titled. Camerawork is conventional at best. Only for the die-hard Swanson fan.

Bizarre but very enjoyable.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 22 January 2010]

Before I review the film, I should point out that the print of this film is absolutely horrible. You can't blame the original film makers--it's just that the years have not been kind to nitrate prints. As a result, the entire film is rather blurry and many of the inter-title cards are practically unreasonable. It desperately needs restoration work and the DVD did not appear to have had much, if any, work done to clean it up and sharpen the print.

The film begins with Gloria Swanson playing a dirt-poor lady whose sister is very ill. Gloria struggles to make ends meet and care for the sister and her career as a painter is dead in the water. At the same time, there is a rich family who is a deliberate and sharp contrast. The rich mother is a total snob but her son is a pretty good guy. However, he doesn't meet Gloria at this point in the film, so his philanthropic bent couldn't save them. To make things worse, a bill collector knows Gloria is unable to pay and he tries to rape her! When she fights back, he calls the police and alleges she robbed him. Since he's respectable and she's very poor, the judge believes him and she is sentenced to 90 in jail. In the meantime, the sick sister dies.

After she gets out of jail, Gloria has no place to live and is broke. She's taken in by the Salvation Army and loves the work she gets there working with underprivileged kids. She then meets the nice rich guy through this job and they soon marry.

Some time passes and now that they are married you see that his mother is still a nasty old snob and hates her daughter-in-law--simply because she was poor. Into this tense household comes a man who in reality is a German spy (the film was made during WWI). He is the same man who sent Gloria to prison!!! And, because he knows who she is AND she'd never told her husband about her past, he knows he can blackmail her into giving him access to government secrets! Will she give in and give the evil blackguard what he wants or will niceness prevail?! As you can probably tell from the plot, the film has a very bizarre plot. It's all very convoluted and hard to believe--but also, in a quirky way, quite good for an older silent film. Not great but watchable--and an interesting window into the sorts of things they found entertaining in 1918.

Melodrama of a woman who is a victim of injustice

[robert-temple-1 · 5/10 · 25 May 2017]

This melodrama directed by Albert Parker stars Gloria Swanson, aged 19, when her crystal eyes were at their most bewitching. The film covers several years, and she ages well. The story begins with her unable to pay the rent for the tenement apartment which she shares with her invalid sister, who cannot even get out of bed. Gloria is a struggling young painter who cannot sell her paintings, and she is down to her last penny. A horrible lecherous rent collector comes to the door and demands money but makes it clear that he will settle instead for payment 'in natura', as they say in Italian slang. He starts to pull her clothes off but she fights him off. His vanity is such that he cannot accept the rebuff and he vows vengeance. Upon leaving the building, he realizes that he does not have his wallet containing all the rent payments. In the struggle to rape Gloria, he had dropped it on the floor. Just as she notices it and picks it up, her door flies open and there is the rent collector with a policeman, and she is accused of theft and arrested. There are horrible scenes in the court where her pleas of innocence are disregarded, and she is sentenced to three months in prison. There is then a great discontinuity in the film because we then see Gloria getting out of prison, and she says her sister has died. It is as if a section of the film were chopped out. Gloria joins the Salvation Army and then she meets a good rich man and they get married and have a child. Another discontinuity in the film occurs when we jump forward very abruptly by five years. It is hard to resist the assumption that at least 20 minutes must have been cut from this film, which now runs 60 minutes. Now the horrible rent collector reappears and tries to blackmail Gloria, telling her she is now on shifting sands (hence the film's title) because if he tells her husband and her hostile mother-in-law that she went to jail for theft she will lose everything. But the story is more complicated than that, because the rent collector has become a German secret agent and what he wants is not money but secret government papers locked in the safe to which only Gloria and her husband know the combination. Will she or won't she? Does she or doesn't she? Will the evil rent collector finally meet with justice? Will Gloria's husband cast her out? I ain't sayin'.

Gloria Swanson's Eyes

[drednm · 30 April 2006]

Neat little melodrama that stars Gloria Swanson as a struggling artist who is framed by her lecherous landlord. After getting out of jail she joins the Salvation Army where she again meets the rich do-gooder (Joe King) she had once met in an art gallery. He has a passion for helping the poor and invites Swanson to help him build a model housing village for tenement dwellers. They fall in love and marry, but to his mother's (Lillian Langdon) dismay.

Years later the landlord shows up in the guise of another man. Swanson seems to remember him but can't place him until she discovers he has invaded her house as a weekend guest to steal some papers from the family safe. The mother sees Swanson run off with the man under cover of night and alerts her son and the police.

They arrive just as Swanson and the landlord are battling for the gun.....

Minor drama runs about 45 minutes, directed by Albert Parker, was among the last films Swanson made for Traingle Pictures before making the quantum leap to working for Cecil B.DeMille.

This is not a great film but Swanson has, by 1918, learned to dominate every frame of film she appears in. At age 21, Gloria Swanson was a star!

Interesting melodrama

[jahlaune · 4/10 · 30 March 2003]

I admit this is a slow movie but it is extremly interesting to people that enjoy Gloria Swanson movies. It's interesting to see her "Pre-DeMille" and see her acting techinigue varies little from her latter work. i.e. Queen Kelly, Affaiirs of Anatol, Sunset Blvd. Also, it's intersting to note that people enjoyed Gloria Swansons appeal in this movie it's innnocence . Sort of Mary pickford-ish without the little girl get ups that rocketed her contempory to fame. Admittedly I agree with other reviewers, this is a film for die hard Swanson fans.

Shifting Sands review

[JoeytheBrit · 6/10 · 29 June 2020]

A fresh faced Gloria Swanson suffers the customary woes of a silent movie heroine in this sudsy melodrama from Albert Parker. It's her earliest surviving feature-length movie, and in it she plays an aspiring artist who finds herself wrongfully accused of theft by a man who tried to rape her. Swanson makes an engaging, sympathetic heroine, but the plot is pure corn.

Memories Play Tricks

[wes-connors · 4/10 · 15 June 2008]

Gloria Swanson (as Marcia Grey) is a struggling artist who paints due more to "youthful unrest than from the call of talent." Not surprisingly, she is unable to make ends meet. When landlord Harvey Clark (as Von Holt or Henry Holt) comes for the rent, Ms. Swanson pleads for a few more days. Mr. Clark makes an alternative offer; he wants sex for rent, but Swanson refuses. During a struggle, Clark drops his wallet. Later, Clark returns with the police, and frames Swanson.

Years later, Swanson has happily married wealthy Joe King (as John Stanford), who has secretly loved her since her tenement dwelling days. Then, Clark returns in a different guise, and threatens to reveal Swanson's notorious past. Swanson, in her "Triangle" period, shows the star quality which would make her one of the biggest stars of the 1920s; she is definitely ready for director Cecil B. DeMille.

"Shifting Sands" has, over the years, been on some shifting sands of its own. It was reissued as Swanson's star took off, but with new intertitles. A change from flashback framing to linear storytelling makes sense, given the photoplay available. Swanson's character was sent to jail for prostitution, rather than theft, originally. This would make the blackmail attempt more believable, albeit spoiled by the ending. Harvey Clark's roles are unclear. Probably improved upon, but confusing in any case.

**** Shifting Sands (8/1/18) Albert Parker ~ Gloria Swanson, Joseph King, Harvey Clark

Gloria's Charm and Ability Are On Display!!

[kidboots · 8/10 · 5 July 2014]

Gloria Swanson started out as a Sennett bathing beauty but one of her early directors, Clarence Badger, found her a very appealing personality and predicted a big future for her in films. Other people felt the same, so in 1918 she was brought over to Triangle where she was given major roles and for the first time able to work with serious directors who she did not let down. The only one of her Triangle films to have survived is "Shifting Sands" but it is a good one, ably directed by Albert Parker and on display is her charm and ability in being able to handle a big assignment so soon after her recent frantic Sennett experience.

Originally released as a wartime melodrama complete with German spies etc, with Gloria Swanson's huge popularity in the 1920s, it was reissued, re-edited and retitled to remove all references to World War One. How did they do it??

Marcia Grey (Swanson) is a struggling artist with not much talent, she observes what bored matrons are prepared to pay for the latest fad - and wants her share!! The answer lies at home: her sister Cora (with the weird title "a bit of blighted humanity") is an invalid and Marcia bitterly wonders if the man she saw at the Art Shop - whose mother was buying a fan for $500 - ever thinks of the poor and how they struggle. Little does she know that John never stops thinking about them, not only has he designed a group of houses with every convenience to help the poor live in comfort, he has also secretly brought Marcia's painting - even though he is not impressed by it!!

When the rent is due and the landlord's "cave man tactics" don't work, he becomes instrumental in having her sent to Blackwell's Island for 3 months on a trumped up charge of burglary. Once released, finding her sister has died, she finds solace in helping the Salvation Army care for destitute children. Pretty far fetched story - after five years pass, Marcia has married John but John's mother is still refusing to have anything to do with her, thinking of her only as "riff raff" and only speaking to her to predict dire consequences etc!!!

Suddenly the rent collector reappears posing as a friend of a friend of John's and, ringing his cronies, they congratulate him for pulling it off. Maybe this was part of the old spy story!! Marcia comes across him trying to gain access to the safe where the valuable papers are kept - he threatens to expose her past unless she gives him access to the papers for just a few hours. Will she cave in - or help the secret service man who suddenly appears, snooping around the house???? I wonder???