Great film. Great direction. Great writing. Great acting. Awesome production values. Great Davies. Great Arbuckle. Great sets. Great restoration. By why did the reissue choose to almost ignore the fact that this film is basically the screen adaptation of a Victor Herbert stage operetta and not pay homage to the composer in its score? Michael Picton's vaguely impressionistic score is admirable in itself. But in all this running time, I only detected three recognizable bars from one of the original songs (in the Irish Princess dream finale). Maybe there are more but they totally escaped me and were buried under too much generic scoring. I think it's definitely a sin against American music history, a great composer and a timeless piece of music. The Herbert songs are so good they can bring joy to any audience on their own.
Review of The Red Mill
