Not much of a comedy, actually, and in the version shown at the NFT- all that is left recently restored- which is partly shortened and summarised- it still takes about a hundred minutes, so it must have much longer originally. Molly, daughter of an Irish washerwoman, falls for rich but dedicated doctor and eventually marries him. What is interesting is the attitudes it shows: with the exception of the doctor, the rich are depicted as idle, evil and lecherous. One of the side-plots involves Molly's father thinking the doctor has seduced her and trying to kill him in revenge. In fact, her father and mother are such well-portrayed characters- like people from Dreiser in a romantic novel- that they unbalance the story and make it look even more clichéd and absurd.
Review of Molly O'
