It was for this film that the team which the following year would give us The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was assembled: Ingram, Mathis, Seitz, Whytock. It is also the first film in which Alice Terry is one of the stars. Hearts Are Trumps is adapted from a play by Cecil Raleigh, one of whose basic themes oddly recalls that of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It is quite a fussy melodrama, but June Mathis and Rex Ingram appear to have enjoyed using it to develop their personal fantasy. The drama is very conventional, but its development provides for several curious scenes. Since Rex Ingram, carried away by his taste for the sumptuous, does not hesitate moreover sometimes to challenge probablity, the film easily achieves the oneiric atmosphere characteristic of a certain style of silent cinema. The print was found in a collection of silent films recently donated to the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique by Monsieur Eric Glife, grandson of one of Belgium’s last fairground movie showmen. Although it is a film from Metro, whose archives are relatively well con- served, the original titles have not been traced.

Jean Marie Buchet, Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique