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The Adventurer
(1910) United States of America
B&W : Short film
Directed by (unknown)
Cast: (unknown)
Essanay Film Manufacturing Company production. / Released 15 January 1910. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama.
Reviews: [The Moving Picture World, 8 January 1910, page 9] Respecting the Probabilities. Whenever a basis of fact is taken for a moving picture story, care, we suggest, should be exercised either by the author or the producer so as not to outrage the probabilities. In the forthcoming masterpiece (we are quoting an extra official description given to the story of “The Adventurer,” to be released on January the 15th) the story, we are told, is founded on a real incident, and the real incent takes place in a compartment in an English railroad carriage running between London and Epsom Downs. / As far as we can gather, the incident is supposed to take place at race time. A woman charges a man with assault; the man, however, clears himself. The story is highly improbable if the incident is supposed to taken place at the time referred to. Hundreds of thousands of people travel over these thirteen or fourteen miles of railroad between London and the Epsom racetrack. It is the last place on the earth where “an English confidence woman” would try to intimidate a man with a charge of assault; in other words, it is highly improbable, or, we might put it, it is straining probability too much. / Then, we come to the statement that the story is in part a true incident, a chapter in the “life of General X, of the English Tenth Hussars.” Here again the author of the Essanay story is mixing things up. On a train between London and Woking, over thirty years ago, Colonel V. Baker was said to have made advances towards a girl who resented them. Anyhow she brought a charge against the Colonel in the police court, and although nothing was proved against the officer, yet public opinion took the view that he had not disproved the charge. So he had to resign the colonelcy of the Tenth Hussars, and went to Egypt, where he served with distinction in the Egyptian army. He did not go to Russia or Plevna. He did not return to England, society did not welcome him back again; and the woman did not confess to having blackmailed him. These are the facts. We are of the opinion that the choice of the theme for the moving picture is out of place. Still, it may work out well on the screen, and we should not have referred to this matter, except that we happened to be very familiar with the Epsom Downs and the Colonel Baker history and therefore we were curious to see how the incidents had been treated by an American film producer.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Listing updated: 4 April 2024.
References: MovPicWorld-19100108 p. 9.
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