ly exist without an atmosphere of secrecy for his human
volcanoes to burst through in the end.

Mary Alden as Mrs. Alving shows in her intelligent and sensitive
countenance that she has a conception of that character. She does not
always have the chance to act the woman written in her face, the tart,
thinking, handsome creature that Ibsen prefers. Nigel Debrullier looks
the buttoned-up Pastor Manders, even to caricature. But the crawling,
bootlicking carpenter, Jacob Engstrand, is changed into a respectable,
guileless man with an income. And his wife and daughter are helpless,
conventional, upper-class rabbits. They do not remind one of the saucy
originals.

The original Ibsen drama is the result of mixing up five particular
characters through three acts. There is not a situation but would go to
pieces if one personality were altered. Here are two, sadly tampered
with: Engstrand and his daughter. Here is the mother, who is only
referred to in Ibsen. Here is the elder Alving, who disappears before
the original play starts. So the twenty great Ibsen situations in the
stage production are gone. One new crisis has an Ibsen irony and psychic
tension. The boy is taken with the dreaded intermittent pains in the back
of his head. He is painting the order that is to make him famous: the
King's portrait. While the room empties of people he writhes on the
floor. If this were all, it would have been one more moving picture
failure to put through a tragic scene. But the thing is reiterated in
tableau-symbol. He is looking sideways in terror. A hairy arm with
clutching demon claws comes thrusting in toward the back of his neck. He
writhes in deadly fear. The audience is appalled for him.

This visible clutch of heredity is the nearest equivalent that is offered
for the whispered refrain: "Ghosts," in the original masterpiece. This
hand should also be reiterated as a refrain, three times at least, before
this tableau, each time more dreadful and threatening. It appears but the
once, and has no chance to become a part of the accepted hieroglyphics of
the piece, as it should be, to realize its full power.

The father's previous sins have been acted out. The boy's consequent
struggle with the malady has been traced step by step, so the play should
end here. It would then be a rough equivalent of the Ibsen irony in a
contrary medium. Instead of that, it wanders on through paraphrases of
scraps of the play, sometimes literal, then quite