oscaralbert Review of The Sisters

The Sisters (1938)

If your movie is going to cover novel chapters in random order . . .

[6/10 · 16 August 2015]

. . . please please PLEAE do NOT confuse viewers by posting actual lingering shots of chapter-opening pages, leaving them on-screen long enough for even watchers WITHOUT a "pause" function to take in sentences which completely confuse folks just wanting to watch a flick (and who would have BOUGHT THE BOOK, if that was their intention). It's okay to have some fine print in your opening credits to specify what connection, if any, your film has to a printed story (often of the same name as the motion picture). But it's probably NEVER smart to reduce your feature film to Kindle-like marginalia on an interactive E-book page. That's essentially what Warner Bros. does in adapting its version of Myron Brinig's novel, THE SISTERS. This movie begins with a lingering shot of the novel's first page, followed by many other such static "scenes." About 54 minutes, 5 seconds into SISTERS we're up to "Chapter 12." However, more than 26 minutes later (or at 1:20:25, to be precise), we're back at "Chapter 10"! Worse yet, the first sentence of this EARLIER chapter is "Two years passed." Did Warner Bros. just slip into a TIME MACHINE when no one was looking?! What the heck just happened, and WHEN are we?! THE SISTERS teaches us that Charles W. Fairbanks was America's Vice President from 1905-1909, and that James S. Sherman held that job for the following four years--but not much else.