Heart Beats of Long Ago

A dramatic story, or, at least, some parts of it are dramatic, of an old Italian love story between families who cultivated a feud. Of course, it is apparent to whoever has followed the intricacies of an Italian drama of about six or seven centuries age that a feud is necessary to the daily life of those people. When a love affair developed between two families who had been jealously nursing a feud for a number of years, it meant death for somebody. In this instance the unfortunate lover was put in an air-tight closet by his sweetheart, and before she could release him he smothered. A very uncomfortable death to die, and a very tearful situation when the closet was opened and his dead body fell out. Staging and costuming are elaborate, but the story has no more than a modicum of interest. It seems too improbable. - The Moving Picture World, February 18, 1911