The Barrier of Ignorance (1914) User Reviews

Value enough to make the whole safely commendable to exhibitors as an offering

[deickemeyer · 23 September 2018]

In the incidents that the development of the story brings out there is a good deal of freshness and many a good chance for acting. The leading roles are played by Paul Hurst (unlettered mountaineer), and Marin Sais (his wife) on one side, with George H. Melford (rich doctor) and Jane Wolfe (his sister) who by some villianous work manages to keep him from marrying Marin on the other side. All these play the climaxes well; but all, with the single exception of Jane Wolfe, are conventional at times and even mechanical now and then. One might safely doubt the naturalness of that scene in which the doctor brings the barefooted and rather unkept mountain girl home to introduce to his proud sister as his acknowledged sweetheart; but no one will so surely doubt the truth of the feelings in all three as the ambitious sister turns from her in proud contempt. Least of all will he doubt the feelings that the sister expresses. Miss Wolfe plays this sister as a true type; the spectator will hardly count her as a villainess, the more because the love interest is not quite true enough to make us wholly sympathize with the doctor in his falling in love. The ambitious sister persuades the girl that his career will be ruined if he marries her, a stock situation. Yet there is good stuff in the interview that Jane has with Marin, and more good acting in the scene at the old tree when Marin gives back the ring and again in the scene at the cabin door when she makes good her purpose by taking as her lover the mountaineer who also loves her while the doctor stands by and sees it all. At this point, the doctor would naturally have passed out of the girl's life, but she and her mountaineer husband have a daughter, played by Cleo Ridgeley who was not so long ago popular in Rex pictures and who, many will remember, more recently took a horseback ride across the continent with her husband. And this girl, in a not wholly convincing incident, is the means of bringing the doctor into the story again to perform a surgical operation that saves the life of the mountaineer's wife. Yet this brings about one of the freshest and most interesting minor situations in the picture. Te wife and mother has been accidentally wounded when trying to protect her daughter who is running away from the father who won't let her learn to read, in the protection of a circuit rider, she comes to the doctor and this brings him back to save the woman's life in spite of the violent opposition of both husband and an ignorant country doctor. The photography is clear and has a pleasing tone. Yet, although it isn't really significant or true, it is secondary; the picture's main theme stands as its chief asset and gives it value enough to make the whole safely commendable to exhibitors as an offering. Perhaps, if it had been condensed to a single reel, it would have been even more commendable. - The Moving Picture World, May 23, 1914