This 1915 “Mutual Masterpicture,” based on the 1908 play by Ferenc Molnár, is a beautiful depiction, both in production and in acting and direction, of the infernal power of emotion over our most dearly held social scruples. That’s the way we see it today, and in Molnár’s play. One version of the film as reviewed in 1915 ends more “educationally” with scenes in Hell, but the surviving copy restored from the paper print submitted to the Library of Congress for copyright ends subtly, with an unexpected final comment from the Devil himself.
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