The Eyes of Julia Deep

This silent film with Mary Miles Minter has an interesting, strangely modern plot and premise. Co-habitation takes place (albeit we are to assume platonically, but it's a big question mark) before marriage between the principal romantic characters, a situation you don't see too often portrayed in early films because of censoring.

Mary plays a shopgirl who falls for a young man despondent over his own character flaws, lack of ambition to succeed, and the poor relationship with his father. He is on the brink of suicide when Mary rescues him and they move in together as friends, becoming emotionally attached along the way. Sounds like a serious premise, but this film detours off into rather routine comedy and slapstick. I think the film would have been better as a drama; Mary and Allan Forrest definitely had chemistry together, and she is quoted as saying in later years that he was her favorite leading man (he was also married in real life to Lottie Pickford, Mary Pickford's sister).

With only a handful of beautiful Mary Miles Minter films left to enjoy however one cannot be too picky. Just be grateful to have it. 90% of silent films made have bit the dust.

"The Eyes of Julia Deep" seems like a more modern comedy than when it was made in two respects. First is its suggestion of premarital cohabitation of the lead characters. In the beginning of the picture, they both live at a lodge on separate floors, but then Julia suggests they form a "co-operative society," which is explicitly offered as a financial matter, to which Terry responds, "And have our meals together?" Along with their chaperon maid, the two are seen occupying the same spaces for much of the film, although still with their separate bedrooms, we may presume but never see. The second rather modern aspect relates more to the history of screen comedy: it seemed to me that by the end of the film at least, the comedy was almost screwball--similar to the romantic comedies of the 1930s and later. It seems quite distinct from the slapstick or other sort of gags and humor done elsewhere on screen by 1918. Much of the film isn't too different from other light romances made at the time, but the marriage and prison episodes near the end are more frantic and absurdly funny.

Another thing this little film has going for it is a quality ensemble cast. Mary Miles Minter is especially appealing. From this film, I see little support of Kevin Brownlow and, one of Minter's directors, Edward Sloman's criticisms of her acting ("The Parade's Gone By"), although there's something to the suggestion that she was a poor man's Mary Pickford, as there's a slight resemblance in appearance and, indeed, Miles did rather try to replace Pickford at Paramount after the latter left that company. Regardless, I found Minter appealing in this film, for her acting and her looks; her close-ups display her good use of facial expressions--her entire face, not just the eyes.

Don't let the year 1918 fool you into thinking that this is in any way a primitive, unpolished production. Far from it! The tinted photography is absolutely superb. The script, intriguing, charming, amusingly sophisticated, flows along as smooth as silk in the expert hands of director Lloyd Ingraham who not only makes the most of the movie's excellent production values, but has drawn beautifully natural performances from his players. True, Carl Stockdale is inclined to over-act his part as a hick sheriff, but he only figures in the climax and is supposed to be rustically amusing anyway.

Despite its unusual theme, "The Eyes if Julia Deep" maintains a splendid balance between romance, drama and comedy. True, in the hands of less skillful players, the film may not have achieved the same success. But who could resist the appealing presence of Mary Miles Minter, who is so charming, so charismatic, so endearingly natural in her good-heartedness? Allan Forrest also provides just the right presence for the likable wastrel that Julia takes in hand. And as for Eugenie Besserer, how much more attractively does her personality come across here than in her hackneyed role as Jolson's mother in "The Jazz Singer"?