WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY
starring Douglas Fairbanks and Kathleen Clifford
PHOTOPLAY
March, 1920
Just how much the best suggestion of plausibility, no matter how fancifully imagined, will help a picture is shown in Douglas Fairbanks' "When the Clouds Roll By." Herein the popular cloud jumper does all the things he has been doing in all his other pictures, but because they are introduced in logical sequence, and, as the result, first, of a regular old terror of a nightmare, and, second, as the planned experiments of a scientist who was making a study of human reactions to certain imposed tests, they seem like a new set of stunts.
Both the interest and the fun of "When the Clouds Roll
By" are constant for three reels, and then, as though he
wished purposely to heap the measure, Fairbanks adds two reels
of as lively and thrilling a melodramatic comedy as any you are
likely to see screened. There is a cloudburst, a flood, a threatened
dam break. I suspect Doug has had this bully idea for a picture
in mind for a long time, and has been saving it until he was practically
"on his own." If he had begun his United Artists' career
with it, he would have given that new connection a boost which
"His Majesty the American" failed to impart. However,
here it is now, and it is Fairbanks at his best. Kathleen Clifford
is successful as the heroine, Frank Campeau is excellent, and
the other parts are all well played.