The Snare (1912) Online

The part that a spy plays in war and the part that a detective plays in the closely analogous situation in social life have much in common. The work that both do is necessary and worthy of high praise when done in the right spirit; but the means used, under other circumstances, would seem contemptible. When one sees, in any picture, a pretty lady detective brazenly winning the confidence of a criminal's old mother solely to betray it, he has to do some deep thinking in a hurry before he can wholly sympathize with it; he has greatly to despise the criminal before the sympathy will come. If he doesn't sympathize with it, he has to condone the criminal, which is revolting to the normal mind. To picture the lady detective at work compels the normal mind to sympathize with her. If the producer's object is to picture the turmoil in a young detective's heart, doing her harsh work for the first time, he can safely picture her as revolting at the means she uses and whatever comes of it, we, at least, have a wholesome picture. The producer of "The Snare" hasn't centered his interest in the detective's heart nor does he permit us to sympathize with the criminal, for we don't know that he is not guilty and surely the detective thinks him guilty since he is in hiding. He makes the lady revolt from her business and help the criminal and then begs the question by proving the man innocent. It is a picture that asks our sympathy, but leaves us no one to sympathize with, and though well produced and cleverly acted it is not a strong offering. Lily Branscombe plays the old mother; Wm. Bailey, her son; Beverly Bayne, the lady on the case; Frank Dayton. E.H. Calvert, Chas. Hitchcock and Wm. Mason are detectives. Howard Missimer is the telegraph operator who brings the news that the man is not guilty, and Whitney Raymond is the boy in the detective agency. - The Moving Picture World, November 2, 1912