The Heroine of Mafeking (1909) User Reviews

What more could a motion picture audience want?

[deickemeyer · 30 January 2015]

Here is another of those stirring war dramas that sets the blood tingling and makes one want to cheer the brave woman who herself forces frightened natives to fill a water cart and then drives it through the zone of fire to where it is needed to restore the exhausted soldiers defending a kopje that commands the town. Then, womanlike, when she has succeeded and the danger is passed, falls fainting into her husband's arms. A war drama of this type, with its battle scenes and its lively action is always interesting and when enacted with the dash and spirit which the Selig Company puts into all it undertakes, makes the picture generally more attractive. One thinks that it is almost useless to undertake a criticism of a picture of this character. Possibly soldiers would see little things that are not as they are carried out in actual military practice, but it must be remembered that the average audience looks at these films as pictures, and the suppression of details helps rather than harms what appears on the screen. The action of the principal character, in this instance a woman, which adds to the interest of the picture, engages most of the attention, and right well does she perform her part. There is action and accomplishment, and the gallant officer who leads the charge on the kopje, Lady Mary's husband, by the way, is rewarded for his bravery by promotion. What more could a motion picture audience want? - The Moving Picture World, December 25, 1909