Reception
The film was a box office hit and received extensive coverage in the newspapers in 1920. A Massachusetts newspaper gave the film the following review:
"'Sex,' the wonderplay of the season ... is startling, even bold in spots, but very, very nice. The picture has undeniable virtues and just as undeniable vices but they belong to the characters in the piece for 'Sex' has a 'soul.' ... A problem, beautifully presented and cleverly analyzed that leaves us with a sense of the infinite at the end -- which is distinctly unusual -- and which is entirely free from the sticky-sweet sentimentality of too many photoplays is the theme of sex. ... The art of the producer, applied with lavish, yet discriminating hand and the talents of the star make 'Sex' superlative entertainment and food for thought."
A Pennsylvania newspaper wrote: "We have heard a great deal in the past year about 'pictures with a soul' but we never quite got the significance of the 'soul-picture' until we saw 'Sex' with Louise Glaum as the star." A Chicago newspaper called it "a lesson to thousands of frivolous creatures who fool themselves into believing that youth lasts forever, that pleasure is life's chief object and that one can violate the laws that regulate our domestic lives and get away with it."
Glaum's performance as the "vampish" Renault drew extensive coverage. One reviewer called it "one of the most perfect vampire characterizations" ever given in a motion picture. Another review called Renault "a dazzling, alluring home wrecker ... who never had a qualm of conscience about taking another's husband."
When the film was screened in 2004, Los Angeles Times film critic, Kevin Thomas, wrote: "Six years before Mae West dared to call her play 'Sex,' Thomas Ince produced and Fred Niblo directed a 1920 film called 'Sex,' starring pioneering screen vamp Louise Glaum as a New York cabaret star, the mistress of a married man. What gives the film its edge is that in truth she is simply a blunt, honest woman who doesn't realize her own vulnerability."
Read more about this topic: Sex (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)