User Reviews

An early Thanhouser version of Oliver Goldsmith's 18th Century novel that suffers from insufficient narrative flow and a lot of over-acting.

Another of those successful reproductions of literary masterpieces, which have been made a feature by this house. The good old Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith's moving story, is here reproduced in all his kindliness. The characters seem to live before one, and all the pathos and beauty of the original is faithfully produced. The mock marriage of the daughter, the imprisonment for debt, and the kindly offices among the prisoners, then the discovery that the marriage was performed by a real minister, and the forcing of the young man to ask the girl's pardon, with the reunion to follow, while the squire asks the hand of the other daughter. The picture closes with a glimpse of the happiness to which the good man is clearly entitled. These reproductions of masterpieces are of benefit to everybody who sees them, while the presentation of such works is to be commended from every standpoint. They are well done, and to those who have read the stories, they come as illustrations of what they already know. If they have not read it, they are introduced to something which surpasses that to which they are accustomed. - The Moving Picture World, January 7, 1911

These days, the novel THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD is more known for being referenced in God only knows how many Victorian novels than as a work of literature in its own right. While not known much outside of nerd and academic circles now, it still had some place in the popular culture around the turn of the twentieth century, when it was given a whopping three film treatments in the 1910s.

This Thanhouser one-reeler is a very, very condensed version of the novel's story. Like most early movie adaptations, it is little more than a highlights reel, more than likely incomprehensible to those who have no familiarity with the story of the original work. As far as that goes, this is a handsome production, with nice locations and costumes. Most of the actors are good in the gesture-heavy movie acting of the period which would evolve into something more subtle by the late 1910s. The plot is melodramatic in the extreme, but played very straight-- an interesting note is that most critics have debataed whether or not VICAR is supposed to be straight sentimnent or a satire on the behavior of its righteous, pure-hearted characters. The filmmakers here seem to have favored the former notion.