In the late teens and early twenties, Cecil B. DeMille transformed Keystone comedienne Gloria Swanson into a mature, sexy leading lady in a series of six films that spawned Swanson's reign as one of the queens of the silent screen. In their first, rather tame outing, Swanson is Leila Porter, the longsuffering wife of a slob named James (Elliott Dexter), who taps his cigar ashes onto the floor or his collar, would rather read the paper than communicate with her, and, horror of horrors, eats onions before kissing her. The nerve. After "several dull grey years of matrimony," Leila's just about had it. Cue the shark, in this case the handsome and suave Schuyler Van Sutphen (Lew Cody). She fends off his relentless attempts to woo her in an inventive series of scenes vibrant with double entendres and sparkling wit—especially when the film forgoes redundant intertitles, you can feel the heat in their exchanges. Evenutally, his efforts pay off, in large part due to James's refusal to realize what a slug he's become. Of course, Leila has a lesson to learn, which the film imparts, oddly enough, in an intertitle two-thirds of the way through, much like Aesop putting the moral of a story before the climax: better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Mr. Romeo Van Sutphen has his share of failings, which turn out to be far worse than those of her loyal but clueless husband.

DeMille emphasizes realism here for the most part (more on that in a second), and this extends to the performances, which are uniformly good and understated. I'm not familiar with either Elliott Dexter, whose career ended even before the silents did, or Lew Cody, who died after a short foray into the talkies, but on the basis of their work here, I'm convinced they're members of that ever-increasing group of actors I wish I'd seen more of. The film's one break with realism is a frankly extraordinary fantasy sequence that drops epic-mode DeMille into this domestic drama in look and feel, if not in scale. In his attempts to woo Leila, Schuyler promises her pleasure, wealth, and love, each illustrated with a sumptuous vignette: "pleasure" is a The Sign of the Cross-style bath scene, where Swanson's surrounded by frolicking and scantily clad maidens; "wealth" has half-dressed Nubian warriors dumping chests full of jewels at her feet in an ornate throne room; and "love," oddly enough, has Cody and Swanson decked out as Adam and Eve (post-shame but pre-eviction) cavorting in a forest glade. It doesn't exactly fit the film, but the continuous exoticism of Swanson's costumes—throughout, she's clad in a panoply of vaguely Oriental wraps, gowns, and headdresses—and the various riches scattered throughout Porter's home at least provides a visual and thematic bridge to the sequence. At any rate, the film is far more interesting with it than it would have been without it, and it appears to have served as a sort of dry run for DeMille's later extravagance.

It's generally a smooth, arch, enjoyable romp; the action moves quickly, there are real sparks between Swanson and Cody, and the cross-cutting between Dexter's transformation from schlub to hunk and Swanson's realization that the grass is always greener is particularly good. There are some problems, of course. The intertitles vary from smart and funny to strangely preachy and moralizing, which illustrates a problem common to all intertitles: most of them are unnecessary or unnecessarily pedantic; they're either telling you something you could have picked up without reading them, or they're providing unnecessary information. And there are structural problems, most of them having to do with the character of "Toodles" (Julia Faye), who is introduced at the beginning but doesn't figure into the plot until near the end, when she's revealed as Schuyler's girlfriend. By the time she enters the storyline, we've forgotton who she is; I had to skip back to the beginning to figure out why I should care about "Toodles."

DeMille, Swanson, and screenwriter Jeanie Macpherson would revisit the story from the husband's perspective the next year in Why Change Your Wife?, which is available on the same disc of Passport Video's problematic Gloria Swanson Collection. This film raises the biggest issue I've encountered, at least so far, with this valuable yet shoddy gathering of her early films. Specifically, it ends in mid-movement and mid-thought, as if there were footage missing; James offers to take Leila back, Schuyler strides across the room and grabs James's arm, and poof! There's a sermonizing "The End" title. It doesn't feel like an ending, although it's possible that even Cecil B. DeMille could have botched it this badly. But given the general low quality of the restorations (or lack thereof) in the collection, along with the fact that the distributors chose to disrespect the films enough to brand them with a logo that doesn't go away, but sits on the screen ugly like a tobacco stain, I wouldn't be surprised if there is actually footage missing, but they just spliced together what remains and called it a day. I suppose I should be happy these films are available at all, but I wish a company that had more respect for the medium had chosen to undertake this collection.

—July 20, 2008