This silent movie, its story constructed around the famous Sir Edward Cole Burne-Jones painting, which in turn was based on the Tennyson poem, is a fair, if pedestrian romantic story about a rich lord (played by Reginald Denny) who loves a poor tenant (played by a Mary Astor so young she hasn't quite lost all her baby fat), who are brought together by the artist painting the picture. The compositions of the individual shots are beautiful -- parts of it were shot on Louis Comfort Tiffany's country home -- but the piece is very static. I can only conclude that Herbert Blache's technique was not up to anything more and this increasingly out-of-date technique would, eventually, result in the end of his career by the end of the decade.
Review of The Beggar Maid
