
Secrets. 1924. USA. Directed by Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Rudolph Besier, May Eddington, Frances Marion. With Norma Talmadge, Eugene O’Brien, Claire McDowell. Digital restoration courtesy Cineteca di Bologna. New York restoration premiere. 108 min.
Following the triumphant return of Frank Borzage’s The Lady in last summer’s Silent Movie Week, here is his first film with Norma Talmadge, a historical romance told in flashbacks. The elderly Mary Carlton (Talmadge) looks back over 40 years of life on the Wyoming plains as her unfaithful husband (Eugene O’Brien) lies dying. Talmadge shines under Borzage’s direction as she moves through the shifting decades and evolving make-ups—so much so that her main box office rival, Mary Pickford, commissioned Borzage to remake the film for her as one of Pickford’s first talkies. The 1924 version is vastly superior, one of Borzage’s most beautiful statements of his eternal theme, the redemptive power of romantic love.