This film is chiefly known today for Rudolph Valentino's cameo role that caught the eye of legendary screenwriter June Mathis. Still, it is a fairly interesting work aside from this: extremely earnest yet somehow charming in the absurd way that only an early silent movie can be. The central character, Gina Ashling (Clara Kimball Young) has reached a serious crossroads in her lifeshould she follow the path of duty and sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of helping her recently impoverished family, the path of ambition and become a famous opera star or the path of wealth and marry a wealthy scoundrel? She is virtually paralyzed by these possible choices, but a convenient Hindu fortune teller (don't ask) comes along and kindly allows her to gaze into his crystal ball and see what will become of her in five years times in all three scenarios. In all cases the choice ends in impoverishment and/or disgrace (the worst perhaps being the one in which she ends up a prematurely aged school teacher trying to control a bratty class), so Gina decides to follow a fourth paththat of true, if impoverished, love and accepts a proposal from her engineer beau. The overwrought solemnity seems campy today, but Young makes it work relatively well, perhaps because even though she is meant to be a young woman she looks more as though she is on the cusp of middle age, making the need to make the right choice all the more urgent somehowtime and youth are no longer really on her side. The writers are also to be commended for not having Young decide to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of everyone else's as often happened in silent films--as a title card cannily points out, other people are all too apt to be ungrateful for the sacrifices of others anyway.
And then there's Rudolph Valentino, inimitably billed as "Clarence Morgan, a cabaret parasite." Small as his part is, it is easy to see why a few years earlier he was everyone's favourite dancing partner at New York's Maxim restaurant and a few years later he became the twentieth century's first great sex symbol. With his gleaming, slicked back dark hair and bright white dress shirt, sinuous movements and suave treatment of Young (he is helping the rich heartless husband frame her for adultery), he is callous, seductive and easily steals the picture during his ten or so minutes of screen time.
All in all, worth a look if you get your hands on a copy of this hard to find film.
