All silent movie revviews are complete and unabridged
IN AGAIN -- OUT AGAIN
starring Douglas Fairbanks and Arline Pretty
PHOTOPLAY
July 1917
It is one thing to sit down with a typewriter and tell how the truths of life ought to be represented in the silences; quite another thing to get those truths over, and not only over, but madly enjoyed. The hypnotists actually doing this today are that Artcraft trio: Loos, Fairbanks and Emerson. I think Miss Loos' adroit characterizations are the cleverest, slyest bits of humanity in pictures. Doug is perforce her hero, but has he any of the usual hero attributes? Not one. Are her heroines of the classic type? Or her villains? Loos is the Barnum of scenarioists; she is hocus-pocusing her public into laughing at itself, and while O. Henry was able to do this in his books, we have so far had no O. Henry for the screen -- unless Miss Loos proves an O. Henrietta.
Mr. Fairbanks is sprung into Artcraft by a timely device called "In Again -- Out Again." The subject of the satire is pacifism, and we iris in on a baby-bood factory canning shrapnel, a wheat shreddery loading high explosiove, and -- oh joy -- a pill foundry making mines. Mr. Fairbanks, as Teddy Rutherford, is refused by his pacifist fiancee because of his belief in preparedness. Hence his adventures, including a perfectly lovely jail made into a cozy corner by the jailer's daughter. His pathetic endeavors to break into this jail again and again give the story its title. When sentenced for thirty days, he leaps upon the bench and kisses the judge, and it is the rival in his new love who not only has him pardoned, but evicted from durance by force. The head pacifist is uncovered as the maker of munitions explosions, and in a series of characteristic Fairbanks stunts smothered in tumult, the slick little farcelet caroms to a close.
"In Again -- Out Again" is two flashing reels for the intelligent, and it is among the month's best entertainments, but it does not quite rank with one or two of the ocmbination's previous diversions. The penalty of speed is that you have to maintain it.