User reviews

The second title of this remarkable picture which was made in Stockholm is. "Or the Great Underworld." We do not dare commend it without reserve as a first-class offering for public amusement, because it is obscure even in its story, and though filled with scenes that show remarkable stage-craft and skillful acting, it will not be wholly understood, except by a very few. Professors of literature might take keen pleasure in it as a vividly presented illustration of a clearly marked trend in European literature: The mystical naturalistic. There is much to be said in favor of it. In the first place, we have had nothing at all like it. Then in acting, in the dancing (one character puts a world of meaning in dance steps) and in the manipulation of the scenes there is so much art that one is not bored even while he fails to catch the sense of what is going on, and finally, those underworld pictures are truly astonishing. We can't tell the story; we couldn't get it, but the picture is full of art. - The Moving Picture World, November 22, 1913