le Holofernes is the embodiment of
the besieging army. Though in a quiet tent, and on the terms of love, it
is the essential warfare of the hot Assyrian blood and the pure and
peculiar Jewish thoroughbredness.

Blanche Sweet as Judith is indeed dignified and ensnaring, the more so
because in her abandoned quarter of an hour the Jewish sanctity does not
leave her. And her aged woman attendant, coming in and out, sentinel and
conscience, with austere face and lifted finger, symbolizes the fire of
Israel that shall yet awaken within her. When her love for her city and
God finally becomes paramount, she shakes off the spell of the divine
honors which she has followed all the camp in according to that living
heathen deity Holofernes, and by the very transfiguration of her figure
and countenance we know that the deliverance of Israel is at hand. She
beheads the dark Assyrian. Soon she is back in the city, by way of the
little gate by which she emerged. The elders receive her and her bloody
trophy.

The people who have been dying of thirst arise in a final whirlwind of
courage. Bereft of their military genius, the Assyrians flee from the
burning camp. Naomi is delivered by her lover Nathan. This act is taken
by the audience as a type of the setting free of all the captives. Then
we have the final return of the citizens to their town. As for Judith,
hers is no crass triumph. She is shown in her gray and silvery room in
her former widow's dress, but not the same woman. There is thwarted love
in her face. The sword of sorrow is there. But there is also the prayer
of thanksgiving. She goes forth. She is hailed as her city's deliverer.
She stands among the nobles like a holy candle.

Providing the picture may be preserved in its original delicacy, it has
every chance to retain a place in the affections of the wise, if a humble
pioneer of criticism may speak his honest mind.

Though in this story the archaic flavor is well-preserved, the way the
producer has pictured the population at peace, in battle, in despair, in
victory gives me hope that he or men like unto him will illustrate the
American patriotic crowd-prophecies. We must have Whitmanesque scenarios,
based on moods akin to that of the poem By Blue Ontario's Shore. The
possibility of showing the entire American population its own face in the
Mirror Screen has at last come. Whitman brought the idea of democracy to
our sophisticated literati, but did not persuade the democr