The Wishing Ring (1914)

According to film historian William K. Everson, to offer a fully detailed synopsis of Maurice Tourneur's delightful period piece The Wishing Ring "would do a disservice to its charm." Suffice to say that the film's wide-eyed heroine Vivian Martin comes into possession of a ring which she believes to have magical powers. Armed with this belief alone, the girl is able to change the course of her entire life. Adapted from a play by Owen Davis Sr., the film opens and closes theatrically, with a group of giggling young maidens opening and closing a proscenium curtain but is otherwise thoroughly and gloriously "cinematic." Such is the skill of director Tourneur that many people have been led to believe that the film, shot in its entirety in New Jersey, was actually produced in England (even the New Jersey Palisades seem convincingly "British!"). Rediscovered almost by accident by movie archivist Kevin Brownlow, The Wishing Ring may well be the best of Maurice Tourneur's pre-1916 films and is also a testament to the talent of his cameraman John Van Den Broek.