Some of the scenes of this interesting picture were produced to be in tune, so to speak, with the song, "Then You'll Remember Me," and to illustrate it. When, about three months ago, a lyric photoplay, "Silver Threads .Among the Gold," was released, this reviewer for several weeks heard that air hummed or whistled on the street or played on the piano in private houses he chanced to be passing. It might have been coincidence or consequence. The song was a fine song and the picture that embodied it was simply constructed, sincere and very human. It was a true lyric photoplay, one that was content to be merely an expression of the song, a jar which the song might be poured and nothing else. The result was a masterpiece, a picture of which the Edison Company can well be proud. More recently, this same company produced a patriotic picture telling the story of our national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner." This also was successful, but wasn't a lyric picture in the same sense as the former was. The present picture, "Then You'll Remember Me," attempts to weld scenes that are truly poetical and in which the sentiment of the lyric is dominant, with scenes that have nothing whatever to do with either song or sentiment. As someone once said to the poet Wordsworth, "It is safe to put poetry into prose, but to put prose into poetry is deadly." That is what this picture does. It doesn't pretend to be a prose play with poetic scenes, but a poetic play, and its very prosy scenes disappoint us. Some prose was perhaps necessary to give the picture backbone, but the picture seems to have much, quite unnecessary prose. There are four long conversations in it which we have no means of fathoming. The worst one of these is between the two senior partners (strangers to the picture till that moment) in their business office at Sidney. It shouldn't have been in any picture, much less a lyric one. The result is that while the lyric makes the situation in some of its scenes, concrete and personal, its use serves to point out the picture's bald places. The other fault of the picture is, that in its endeavor to be imaginative it overshoots the mark. This is true in several places, especially in the attitude of the players to their vivid mental images. These people were not mad. People who really experience such visions know that they are not fooled by them. They may step toward them and even hold out their arms to them, but only in the greatest stress of passion and in the greatest hopelessness. The closing of this fine picture was, we are sorry to say, awkward. - The Moving Picture World, September 9, 1911
