The Wooden Bowl (1912) User Reviews

As though it were a sort of fairy tale told on a set of plates

[deickemeyer · 19 November 2016]

A picture that pleases through the heart-interest in its situations rather than through any dramatic strength. It teaches a good homely lesson mordantly; but the producer, with fine artistic common sense, has set it apart from ordinary life by costuming it so as to give it a Delft atmosphere, as though it were a sort of fairy tale told on a set of plates. This doesn't weaken the story and makes the moral acceptable. Otherwise it might have seemed a bit too much like just a tract on the inhumanity of treating age-weakened parents as though they were only children. We recognize Mr. Arthur Johnson through his make-up as the granddad who was apt to drop his china bowl, and also Miss Lottie Briscoe as the daughter-in-law. We think the son, in his Dutch wig, is Mr. Mitchell. All do very acceptable work, as does the little boy who pitied the granddad, perhaps a bit too much for naturalness, when his parents made the wooden bowl. Photography is as usual. - The Moving Picture World, June 1, 1912