Volume II: Filmography

OH, WHAT A KNIGHT!

October 18, 1910 (Tuesday)

Length: 1,000 feet

Character: Drama

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, October 22, 1910:

"May Brandon is a young woman of the present day who finds that the course of true love can sometimes run too smooth. She is engaged to the man of her choice, but no one objects. In fact, there is not the slightest opposition to her marriage in any quarter. And, being a woman, she does not like it. Perhaps she would have been married in the orthodox way had it not been for a dream that she had. In her sleep she found herself a beautiful young woman, persecuted because she was loyal to the knight she had selected. Her father was obdurate, and finally practically made her a prisoner in his gloomy old castle. Her sweetheart called with a rope ladder. They escaped, and after a number of thrilling adventures were married, and presumably lived happy forever afterwards.

"When May awoke, she was more discontented than ever. She flouted her fiancé, and returned his ring and swore she would never marry him. But finally she told him of her dream, and he won forgiveness by promising to run away with her like the knight of her dreams. Being a man of his word, he did. But the romance all faded out of it. The adventures they passed through were not to the woman's liking, and her experience convinced her that swashbuckling knights are as much out of date as are stagecoaches."

REVIEW by Walton, The Moving Picture News, October 29, 1910:

"This is a film a man remembers without looking at his notebook. 'Once upon a time, the good old days,' muses the romanticist. 'What about today?' explodes the practical man. This reel shows the whole situation, and does it well - very well."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, October 29, 1910:

"Here is a romantic girl determined to have a genuine knight, like the mighty and valorous men of old, to come and carry her away from her prison in the gloomy old castle. She dreams it all out, but when they attempt to carry out the same scheme in the present workaday world their plans go awry and they discover that knights of old are as foreign to this age as they can well be, she is forced, by the very perversity of things mundane, to accept her lover in quite the conventional way. As a travesty upon useless romance this film is a great success."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, October 26, 1910:

"This idea has been used quite recently in an Independent film, but not nearly so effectively as in the hands of the capable Thanhouser players. They give the farcical events an air of reality that goes far to strengthen the comical results. A romantic young girl who has been reading a novel dreams of the manner in which she would have been courted and won in the days of knights and ladies. She sees herself elope with her brave lover who saves her from two bad assailants - bad swordsmen too, by the way, but as it was only a dream, let it pass. Then comes reality. She insists on her lover rigging himself up in knightly costume and carrying her off on a horse to be married. The absurdity of this business in modern times is not made as much of as might have been, but it brings plenty of laughter. The actress who played the part of the girl marred her work by turning too often to face the camera. She is very pretty and attractive but she should not permit it to appear that she is so well aware of her beauty."

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