Jon Mirsalis on Piano. We are still discovering the work of Maurice Tourneur. Alias Jimmy Valentine was found only two years ago, the latest in a series of finds made in the 1970s and 1980s, and it confirms yet again the elegant versatility of this extraordinary film pioneer. Happily, the recovered print is in mint condition, fully tinted and toned to show off Tourneur's genius for pictorial effects. As usual, Tourneur is obsessed with atmosphere and detail, and O. Henry's clever crime story provides him the ideal narrative framework for the visual surprises. The bank robbery sequence is a particular tour-de-force, a single long-held shot that anticipates the cutaway set and sequence shots in The Hand of Peril that Tourneur made a year later. Directed several years before he turned to storybook fantasies and Art Nouveau design, Valentine is one of those stylish crime thrillers that the young Tourneur adapted when he first came to the United States in 1914. While the atmosphere that Ben Carré creates is highly effective and unmistakably French, some of Tourneur's most flamboyant trademarks still lie ahead. At its worst, it plods; but at its best, it anticipates the rhythm and pictorialism of von Sternberg's great silents. --Russell Merritt