Something to Think About (1920)

During the late teens and early '20s, filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille reveled in much cinematic pomp and circumstance, mixing epic past-life fantasies with James M. Barrie in Male and Female and blending high society with sex in the domestic scenarios of Don't Change Your Husband and Why Change Your Wife?. So when he tried for simplicity and a spiritual message with Something to Think About, it took quite a few people aback. Elliott Dexter plays David Markley, crippled but wealthy, who pays for the education of Ruth Anderson Gloria Swanson, daughter of the town blacksmith Theodore Roberts. When Ruth returns from school, Markley falls in love with her. She feels obliged to marry him but elopes instead with Jim Dirk Monte Blue. After Dirk is killed in an accident, Ruth comes home once again, but her angry and now-blind father denounces her. The altruistic Markley agrees to marry Ruth only for the benefit of the son she had by Dirk. But this marriage -- in name only -- turns into a real romance as Ruth and Markley fall in love. The bad feelings between them vanish and heal the crippled man. The intention behind Something to Think About was certainly well-meant, but at this point in DeMille's career words like "straightforward" and "uncomplicated" just weren't part of his vocabulary. Unfortunately that's just what this film needed to be, but instead it veered between sincerity and melodrama.