Volume II: Filmography

HYPNOTIZED

British release title: A QUACK HYPNOTIST

December 30, 1910 (Friday)

Length: 965 feet

Character: Drama

Cast: William Russell (the hypnotist)

Note: The title was given erroneously as The Hypnotist in a mention in the August 1912 issue of The Motion Picture Story Magazine.

ADVERTISEMENT, The Moving Picture World, December 24, 1910:

"A story of love, true and false, that you'll like for the very air of reality about it. The picture pictures conditions as they exist; it treats boldly of the dangers and pitfalls that beset the young rich and innocent in this country today. As such it is a powerful weapon for reform and your woman patrons will praise you for using it...."

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, December 31, 1910:

"May Smalley is a simple little country girl with whom Jack, a youth whom she has known since childhood, is very much in love. When a traveling show, consisting of a hypnotist and a Hindu magician comes to the opera house in her little town, the two young people are among the other interested spectators who flock to see the performance. May's youth and beauty attract the hypnotist, who plans to lure her away from her home. He sends May a message that he has a communication for her from the spirit world. Against the protest of Jack, her escort, May goes behind the scenes after the performance to meet with the great hypnotist, who fascinates her with his wiles. The hypnotist is an unscrupulous villain, and seeing that May is thoroughly impressed with his few tricks and considers him quite superhuman, he induces her to follow him when he leaves the town.

"How Jack proves himself to be a youth of resource as well as courage, the important part he played in May's deliverance by the Hindu fakir, is well told by the picture. Finally the hypnotist is shown in his true light. May is disillusioned, and comes to decide that Jack is just about the kind of protection she needs in a world of uncertainty."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, January 14, 1911:

"The tale of how a traveling hypnotist takes advantage of a young girl and so influences her that she goes away with him. Her lover follows, shows up the fakir and rescues the girl despite all opposition. It is a good story, well told, and the audience seems intensely interested in it."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 4, 1911:

"How a young impressionable girl may be awed and led astray by the mysterious and the supernatural was shown in this film. In order that the young man might disguise himself and so surprise the spectator, the story became mechanical in its last scenes, which might have been avoided by proper treatment. John and Mary [sic] were two young country lovers, and when the hypnotist and magician came to town they very naturally went to see them. At the performance in which she was intensely interested, her ring was returned to her with a note on it from the hypnotist, saying that if he could meet her at the end of the show, he would give her a message from the spirit world. She went, although John would not go with her. Perhaps he may be forgiven, being an unsophisticated country lad, from offering his protection against a man he believed suspicious, but he later made amends by rushing up to the stage, knocking down the magician, putting on his costume and following the hypnotist and Mary to the hotel where he rescued her from his attacks and insinuations. It would almost seem as if he might have done it before. The acting was in keeping."

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