As with "The Cheat", which Cecil B. DeMille made concurrently with this film, "The Golden Chance" features chiaroscuro effects: blackened out backgrounds, symbolic shadows, mood-setting shades and other effective uses of lighting. But, DeMille and cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff took the lighting much further in "The Cheat". It dominated the picture, and made it one of the more exceptional early feature-length films. Additionally, Wilfred Buckland's minimalist settings are effective, as in "The Cheat". The melodrama is about as uninteresting and unimportant, too.
The story in "The Golden Chance" is about a woman who marries down to an abusive drunk and thief, but after a Cinderella episode falls in love with a millionaire. It's generic, classist, forgettable, escapist pastiche. Yet, forget the story, this is recommendable for being a well-crafted film for 1915, and for being available today in such high quality.
The story in "The Golden Chance" is about a woman who marries down to an abusive drunk and thief, but after a Cinderella episode falls in love with a millionaire. It's generic, classist, forgettable, escapist pastiche. Yet, forget the story, this is recommendable for being a well-crafted film for 1915, and for being available today in such high quality.