Thanks to Edward Lorusso for producing and David Drazin for scoring the presentation for this obscure silent film, "Straight Is the Way." It's a silly one, but enjoyable and interesting in a way. It's the usual corrupt city and Christian country dichotomy of some of these old flickers, but the treatment tends to be comical. There are too many intertitles, but some of the jokes in them are amusing. The puns based around the spiritualism (in vogue at the time) of the Ouija board and the other spirits related to the era's Prohibition are my favorite.
The scenario involves New York crooks venturing to New Hampshire to steal from rural mansions. The first one they try to heist, though, belongs to some genteel poor women who apparently refuse to work for money and think it wise to sell all their belongings just to keep up with the interest on their mortgage. In lieu of sound financial sense, they turn to begging the ghost of a dead uncle via the Ouija board to lead them to hidden treasure. The thieves, meanwhile, decide to hide out in a closed-off part of the residence, where they wind up becoming sympathetic to the women's plight. Pretty ridiculous stuff--the supposed virtue of country-bumpkin stupidity and the evil of how the modern world actually works around money lending--but the absurdity of it is also the appeal.
I also find such con-artist films to be of interest, as the thieves here also pretend to be others, including a detective hunting for burglars in the area, which means he's pretending to be looking for himself. It's also an actor playing a character who is also acting as another character. The Ouija board stuff works, too, full of messages made of letters that it is, as the story writing itself or being written by the characters. A local reporter conducting interviews in a couple brief appearances can also be seen underscoring this point. It makes sense that pioneering scenarist Francis Marion penned it.