"The Whip" is a somewhat interesting early feature-length silent film made by one of the better filmmakers of the 1910s Maurice Tourneur (director of "A Girl's Folly" (1917) and "Victory" (1919), among others) and his usual, capable crew, including designer Ben Carré and cinematographer John van den Broek (usual assistant director and editor Clarence Brown might've been in the Air Corps during this production). "The Whip" is a melodrama involving the baddie trying to fix a horserace and, in general, ruin our heroes' lives for his profit. This leads to two especially well-staged crashes for 1917, one with a car, complete with it bursting into flames, and the other a trainwreck. There's a last-minute rescue chase, a la D.W. Griffith's films, which involves cinema's favorite technologies for the genre at the time: in addition to the automobile, telephones and trains. And, the climactic horse race is well staged, photographed and edited.
The print I saw, however, was of poor quality, and I'm not aware of an especially good copy of this film available on home video as of yet. The film ran for about 48 minutes, which is clearly shorter than the, reportedly, 8 reels the film originally ran. In this print, some of the editing seemed confusingly quick in places, sacrificing narrative coherence, and the poor transfer seemed to be running the film a bit too fast. It was still viewable and fairly entertaining, but the print surely detracted from the picture's original quality. Additionally, the film was presented by a "Pyramid Pictures Inc."; perhaps, this version is from a reissue release, but I don't know.
