Thru Different Eyes (1929)

Director: John G. Blystone                           Writers: Tom Barry & Edna Sherry
Music: William Kernell                                 Cinematography: Al Brick & Ernest Palmer
Starring: Warner Baxter, Edmund Lowe, Mary Duncan and Sylvia Sidney

Before there was Vantage Point, before there was Rashomon, there was Thru Different Eyes, a silent film by Fox that deals with the idea of different perspectives on a single incident. I’d like to think that Milton Herbert Gropper’s play had something to do with exposing the wrongs done in the Sacco and Vansetti trial, but I can’t find any research to back that up. The film begins in the newsroom of the court, a big murder trial taking place. To set the tone for the film one female reporter is seen on the phone with her paper, telling how brave and steadfast the wife of the murderer is. At the opposite table a man is telling his paper that the wife is cold and indifferent to her husband’s fate. The difference of perspective is what the film is all about.

Edmund Lowe is on trial for murdering Warner Baxter. The defense attorney tells the story of a couple very much in love, Lowe and Mary Duncan. When Baxter falls in love with Duncan and can’t bear to be without her, he comes over to her house, takes a gun out of her hand, shoots Duncan and then kills himself. Earlier in the story Lowe had told Duncan that the first shell in his gun was a blank, and so Duncan is safe but Baxter is dead. The prosecution, however, tells a very different story, of a couple who are libertines, drinking and smoking and implications of wife-swapping. In this version Duncan is going to run away with Baxter to Italy, and Lowe kills him in a jealous rage. Once the verdict comes in Sylvia Sidney, who has been sitting in the gallery the whole time, can’t take it and tells the real version to the courtroom.

Though she only has a small part, Silvia Sydney is wonderful to watch. This was her first film before going on to a long and successful acting career, mostly in television, though she did some nice films in the thirties like Sabotage for Alfred Hitchcock and Fury with Spencer Tracy. Warner Baxter gets a lot of screen time for a dead man, with very different portrayals in each of the three versions. He was, of course, the star of the Oscar nominated 42nd Street, and won his own statuette for best actor in 1930 for In Old Arizona. Mary Duncan also does a nice job, with different characterizations in all three versions, though her vamp bit in the second one went a little overboard. Edmund Lowe, the murder suspect, has a smaller amount of screen time.

It’s difficult to assess the artistic merits of this film because the only version that exists is not the one intended for most audiences. This is an early sound film that, unfortunately, has been lost. In those transitional days, however, most films were also printed as silents with intertitles so that theaters without the proper equipment could still run them. This is the only print that still remains and much has been lost in the translation. The minimal titles do the job of conveying the basic plot, but it’s also clear there is a lot that is being missed without the dialogue, and that music and sound effects were meant to be an integral part of the production. In addition, most silent films from this era used the new technology to put music soundtracks on the film but because this wasn’t technically a silent picture there is also no music, and so it really is silent.

This would have been a fun piece for actors to do on stage, playing the same scene three different ways. And while the ending strains credulity, it is still an enjoyable exercise. The film is probably best appreciated as a subject of study, for while it is technically a lost film we still have the silent version to give us at least some idea of what the completed project would have been like. A New York Times review from 1929, however, lets us know how very much of Thru Different Eyes we’re still missing.