A Lad from Old Ireland - 1910

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Kitty
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A Lad from Old Ireland - 1910

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A Lad from Old Ireland boasts to be the first film made on two continents – Ireland and America. The interest stops there, though, I am sorry to say. The copy I was able to see had German inter-titles, and they went by so fast that I couldn’t even pause the video to look them up on Google Translate. That being said, I had a very vague idea about what was going on. After I watched the film and read the synopsis, I learned things that I did not catch while watching the film, and it finally all made sense to me.
This is a very uninteresting story about a young man who leaves his homestead of Ireland to go to America to become rich. He becomes a very successful politician in the seven years that he is gone. In the meantime, his girlfriend (Gene Gauntier) and her mother at home are about to lose their house due to inability to pay their debt. A letter is sent to the young man in America about their situation, and he finally arrives just in time to pay the debt and save the women from their horrible fate.
This Kalem short could have been better. Supposedly Gene Gauntier wrote the photoplay on the boat between America and Ireland. Sidney Olcott, who also directed, played the lad from old Ireland. Gauntier looked lovely in it, especially in the beginning scenes before the young man went to America.
Rating 4/10
You trying to tell me you didn't hear that shriek? That was something trying to get out of its premature grave, and I don't want to be here when it does. - Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

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