I first saw The Lost Chord when it was reissued in the mid-'30s and I was eight. At the time, it seemed to have a larger-than-life emotional quality quite missing from current films, and it also suggested that this was what silent films were like. (I didn't know then that it was indeed a remake of a 1919 silent film). It took exactly fifty-four years to track down this print, in Hollywood of all places. Obviously, and this was expected, it isn't the great film that it seemed to an eight-year-old, bored with such 1937 releases as Fight for Your Lady and The Man Who Found Himself. But it does have a certain power and poignancy, and despite its almost uninhibited mixture of sentiment and melodrama, its echoes of silent film work rather well. In any event, given kindness and understanding, and the realization that such an unrestrained dose of sentiment was filmed in the hard-bitten thirties, the film will probably still be quite impressive, and certainly deserves this brief return to life on the big screen. -William K. Everson