This must have been a spectacular stage show. I can see how it would work there: the shooting, the strangling, the processional before the murder; these would really have worked under the proscenium arch, and there is a good attempt to open it out in the added scenes, but the whole thing comes to a crashing halt for me at the thought that anyone would look at Alice Joyce when he's got Jetta Goudal on his second string.
Also, Mr. Arliss -- who once in court described himself as the world's greatest actor and explained later than he had been under oath to the tell the truth -- is, alas, voiceless, and so largely wasted in a silent movie, although his witty stage ad libs are preserved in the titles. Even so, he acts everyone else off the screen, even as they chew the scenery in order to be noticed -- except Jetta Goudal, who is simply luscious. Harry Morey, as Miss Joyce's two-bottle-a-day husband is a caricature and you know at the halfway mark how it is all going to turn out.
Still, there is Mr. Arliss to look at, before he turned so old and arthritic-looking in the 1930s -- perhaps because he was trained in the more posing-and-exposition style of acting fashionable in the 19th century. If this comes your way, give it a look, but ask them to crank it a trifle faster than they did tonight at the Museum of Modern Art. The IMDb lists it at 80 minutes. It was originally announced at 90 minutes, but the print from UCLA ran 110 minutes. Either the opening needs to be cut or it needs to be projected a couple of feet per minute faster. Maybe both.
