Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

mark.waltz Oh how the reel creeks in this tedious melodrama that starts off ridiculously and slides down into the muck of a total yawn-fest. Knowing that his wife killed an admirer accidentally in self defense, the husband spends 15 years in prison while she turns into a bitter, controlling shrew of a mother for their child. When he is granted parole, the husband moves in as the eternal guest, becomes supportive to his daughter (unaware of his identity), and tries to brighten up her life, even though she is involved with an alleged scoundrel that her mother does not approve of. Snail paced direction by Phil Rosen and dialog delivery is the nail in this squeaky coffin that features weak acting, an unbelievable plot line and poor, slow editing. Silent star Henry B. Walthall looks like a walking corpse as the long-suffering husband, and handsome Ricardo Cortez seems embarrassed by the whole thing while playing the young love interest. A melodramatic plot twist comes out of nowhere to attempt to liven things up, but by that time, it is too little, too late. Yes, this is a very early talkie, so some creakiness is expected, but this just never crosses the line into anything memorable.

bkoganbing Some rather stilted acting characterizes this melodrama about a man who confessed to a murder his wife did and got life in prison for it. Henry B. Walthall who played a lot of noble and self sacrificing characters on the silent screen and in talkies was at the top of his game in both those categories. The title of the film is a misnomer because there are no ghostly apparitions here, simply Walthall hanging around his family under an alias. But his daughter Nancy Welford bonds with him and can't explain the connection she feels.Walthall was an inventor and his patents were assigned over to his wife Grace Valentine which has made her a most wealthy society dame. She wants a title for Welford to marry and there's some silly English earl played by Rolfe Sedan hanging around probably looking to give some woman his title for her money. That's not what Welford wants, she wants to marry earnest young Ricardo Cortez. But Valentine threatens to ruin him if he marries her.Into this mess walks Walthall back into their lives, given parole after 15 years. He's traveling incognito at first as the daughter has been given a whole different story about a father who died in the late World War. I won't go any farther except that in the end both the women come to a radical reassessment about things. And Walthall once again thinks of others.I doubt we'll ever see a remake of this old fashioned story. The Phantom Of The House was written for a different with different tastes in literature and different ideas about what constitutes a hero. Also it is plain the players were getting used to sound and both Walthall and Cortez did much better work in sound very shortly.It's a real museum piece of a film.

edalweber Not a bad effort for its era. People seeing the audience reaction in "Singin' In the Rain" are seeing an anachronism.That would be the reaction of a 1950 audience used to perfected talking pictures.But for audiences accustomed to silent movies,even imperfect sound was marvelous,making complicated plots like this far more practical than with silents. As others said, Henry Walthall and Ricardo Cortez give very professional performances. The film of course is "stagy", partly due to the limitations of sound equipment at the time but more due to the type of story it was.Even later efforts like"The Mask of Demetrius" were just about as stagy because of the nature of the plot. For one thing, this and other movies allow us to see basically what a stage melodrama of the period was like,something almost impossible to completely duplicate today,because todays actors simply didn't grow up in that old tradition. Still, the sets are very interesting, and it is somewhat filmic, allowing scenes and shots such as closeups that stage can't provide, so it is better than merely a filmed stage play. All in all a rather interesting movie.

boblipton This 1929 mystery-tearjerker suffers from all the stereotypical problems of talkies in this year -- a very few works like Mamoulian's APPLAUSE aside -- immobile camera and actors who seem unable to read a line with any naturalism. The sound track sounds poor, too, but that might will be an artifact of a worn print.Director Phil Rosen makes a good stab by using short cuts to fake a mobile camera, and it's a pleasure to watch old pros Henry Walthall and Ricardo Cortez exhibit their physical naturalness, but the many poor performances and, by modern standards, decidedly pinheaded plot keep this from being worthwhile as more than a curiosity.