Alternating between poetic and trite, the film is nonethless "Visually Stunning"

Classic movie actor John Barrymore is accompanied on screen with the likes of Warner Oland, Mary Astor, and a very young Myrna Loy in a small point. One of the particular eccentricies of silent movies is used in this movie a large number of times, that is that the actors and the action play right into the camera lense. Using a visual techniqque mostly lost since the early thirties, the director (Alan Crosland) shoves the camera right into the middle of things, if not right into Barrymore's eyes a few times.

They say that an actor "on the boards" (i.e., in a live action theatre play) has to play his part to the whole theatre. But a movie actor plays to the screen. In silent films like this, though, the actors often play right to the camera lense, as if that tiny glass recording window was the audience.