A Day That Is Dead

Our own personal opinion of what makes a beautiful picture is different, it seems, from that of many others whom we meet. With us, humanity, when shown truthfully, has more beauty than any background. Yet this picture. "A Day that Is Dead." awakened much enthusiasm, because its backgrounds are finer than usual and are well photographed. Truly, such pictures of the sea as it gives arc worth while, for the scenes along rocky shore with the angry billows crashing over it are magnificent. The story is not at all worthy of the poem which gave the suggestion, and the quotations from it, "Break, break, break on thy cold, gray crags. O sea," give to it nearly all the depth that it has. If it had not been set in England and in the peculiar costumes of that country about a hundred years ago, it would have escaped many counter suggestions. To begin with, no English peasant would have been fool enough to think himself equal to a lord, not until he was angry. Then there are the distinctly Californian buildings and, last, the Catholic church and the priest. The story was impossible in America or in any old world country, but the scenes were surely fine. - The Moving Picture World, February 15, 1913