I've watched the film. I've read an outside synopsis of the plot. And still I can only come to the conclusion that this is some of the most astonishingly thin writing I've ever seen. There are concrete ideas here, yes. One is a domestic drama in which the responsible sister feels obliged to help her much less responsible brother. The other is a shameless exploitation flick in which someone - be it the producers, director George Terwilliger, or writer William B. Laub - proclaimed "Communists! Ooh, so scary!" and the others said "Communists! Ooh, so scary!" and agreed, and all collectively decided that was sufficient basis for a plot (it's not). As to the rest, well, I've seen deliberately abstruse arthouse features that made more sense. Laub attempts to string together those concrete ideas in a single narrative, but in my opinion he very simply fails to do so in a manner that's coherent, cohesive, and meaningful. None of the story surrounding Marguerite De La Motte's role holds up under the slightest bit of scrutiny, which is unfortunate since she is the star, and like dominoes the logic of the characters around her fall in turn, and subsequently the threads in which they figure. Even no few of the intertitles raise a skeptical eyebrow, as many pieces of dialogue thusly imparted feel bizarrely redundant, contradictory, or otherwise half-baked. Why, there's a suitable key word, "half-baked": so very much of 'Daughters who pay' comes across as a tale that was not fully developed, but producers decided it was good enough because it stirred drama and romance into a ploy to capitalize on the Red Scare.
I've seen it remarked that modern viewers are too obsessed with plot - unable to enjoy a picture for what it is, and instead looking for every little hole and failure of reasoning in what writers and filmmakers have conjured. I can understand that sentiment, but I think it applies mostly if not exclusively to action romps and genre flicks where a highfalutin spectacle is the order of the day. In other fare like this solid storytelling is paramount, and no matter how forgiving one might be of any movie, the sketchier the saga is, the poorer the end result will be. For example, the description of Sonia as a dancer famous among her countrymen doesn't hold up in light of other details about the character; intertitles posit that Henry Foster had suspicions, and those suspicions may have been easily confirmed, and the story stopped cold, had he acted on them; the entire third act feels painfully flimsy, an assemblage that's stitched together only with wishful thinking. True, it's not as if everything about this 1925 feature is awful. There's a shrewd bit of subtlety, easily missed if one isn't paying utmost attention, in how the character of Margaret is introduced without the convention of the silent era of including the actor's name on the same intertitle. Despite some clear deterioration in the surviving print (mostly in the last reel), by and large the image here is crisp and vivid, a credit I trust to the cinematographers. The sets are pretty fantastic, as is the costume design, hair, and makeup. Those stunts and effects that are employed are terrific, and Terwilliger and his cameramen illustrate keen eyes for the minutiae of the goings-on in any scene. I think the cast are all-around terrific in the performances that they give. In terms of its fundamental craft 'Daughters who pay' is well made.
And yet none of this matters, not really, when the writing is so desperately troubled. I don't necessarily blame those involved for jumping on the bandwagon of "Communists! Ooh, so scary!" - propaganda, manipulation, fear, and prejudice are powerful weapons, and have been maliciously deployed against many groups throughout history, confounding sometimes even the smartest of people. I see what Laub tried to put together here, and I think the concept is maybe even a tad clever, political underpinnings aside; there are some good thoughts among the beats that meagerly flesh out the narrative. Yet the pieces as they present are deeply unconvincing generally, and simply do not all fit together, and the conglomeration holds water only insofar as one doesn't think about any of it for a single moment. There was potential in the material, yet as far as I'm concerned the title just doesn't make the grade as we see it. There are worse things one could watch; this still deserves remembrance and recognition as a relic of a bygone era of cinema, and on its own merits for what is genuinely done well. Would that the screenplay counted among its advantages, for its shortcomings are significant and make this difficult to earnestly engage with. I'm glad for those who appreciate 'Daughters who pay' more than I do, but as far as I'm concerned this just doesn't pass muster.
