The Last Dance (1912) User Reviews

She puts under her spell all who are so fortunate as to see this picture

[deickemeyer · 14 December 2016]

Up to the last scene title this beautiful drama seemed to be beyond reasonable adverse criticism. It was delightfully conceived and executed, and in every detail deserving of high praise. A dancing girl, one whose dance is not of a sort in the slightest degree objectionable, in fact, her dancing is of the classic school and charms by its simplicity and grace, is taken ill one night in the theater. Her physician sends her to the country to his sister. There she meets a minister, and in him finds the man she loves. The affection is reciprocated. The minister reads in a city newspaper the statement that the popular dancing girl, whose photograph is also printed, is on the road to recovery. It is his first intimation that Mignon is of the stage. In a rage he seeks her out and denounces her. She pleads with him, pleads with him in a way that would melt anything but the heart of a man in whose veins coursed the blood of a fish, and tell him her dance is not wicked. She begs him to let her demonstrate to him how foolish he is. In the uncut grass, in the bright sunlight, a grove in the background, she dances as she had previously danced before the footlights. At times she turned to the minister seated on a decaying log in the foreground, her arms extended toward him. It was "the last dance." As she halted, with a cry of pain, the minister rushed to her side. She collapsed and fell. The minister leaned over her. Her heart had failed. As a party of picnickers who had been drawn to the spot utter a cry of horror the minister gives voice to an expression as utterly incongruous as it was ridiculously misquoted: "Let him who is among you without sin cast the first stone." Throughout the whole play there had not been an act or a look that would remotely justify such talk. Winnifred Greenwood took the role of the dancer; her work is dainty and in the best sense artistic. She puts under her spell all who are so fortunate as to see this picture. Kathlyn Williams, who wrote the scenario, may feel proud of her work and of her sister player. - The Moving Picture World, July 20, 1912