Summary
Wallace Clifton and Frederick J. Jackson’s 1918 morality pageant Tinsel drapes the death-shroud of a second marriage around Princess Sylvia Carzoni’s marble shoulders, then threads her grief through the eye of a single letter that will yank her estranged first husband, war-scarred attorney Richard Carmichael, back into the orbit of a daughter he has raised on candle-lit bedtime stories rather than champagne toasts. Into this epistolary fuse wanders Ruth—wide-eyed, breath-soft, hungry for the mirrored ballrooms her mother once ruled—who mistakes the glitter of upper-crust courtship for the shimmer of genuine affection. Sylvia, half-siren, half-sentinel, consents to the experiment: let the girl taste the arsenic-laced meringue of high society so she can cough it back up before the poison reaches marrow. A parade of silk-wrapped predators—aging roués with carnation buttonholes and debts to the Riviera—circle the debutante, but only Jefferson Kane, a panther in white tie, succeeds in luring her to his cliff-top manor where moonlight is just another curtain for coercion. The camera, restless as a gossip columnist, stalks mother and daughter through corridors of veined marble and secrets, until Sylvia, gown fisted like a battle standard, crashes the tryst, rips the masquerade veil, and drags Ruth home through a gauntlet of torch-song rain. The final tableau: Richard and childhood sweetheart Bobby Woodward storm the gates, hearts blazing, only to discover that the woman they branded reckless has soldered the family fragments back together; Sylvia’s contrition glows hotter than her diamonds, Richard’s anger melts into recognition, Ruth’s innocence graduates into earned wisdom, and the curtain falls on a quartet reconciled under the flickering admission that society’s gilt is, indeed, only tinsel.
Synopsis
After her second husband dies, Princess Sylvia Carzoni writes to her first husband, Richard Carmichael, requesting the custody of their daughter Ruth. The naïve Ruth is so thrilled at the prospect of entering society that Richard reluctantly allows her to go, and in her new surroundings, she happily receives the attentions of several of her mother's friends. Through her own innocence, Ruth withstands their advances, but she falls victim to the dashing Jefferson Kane, who suggests that she visit him at his home. Suspicious, Sylvia follows her daughter to Jefferson's estate, where she finds Ruth struggling with the villain, and after denouncing him, Sylvia takes the girl home. Sylvia lovingly embraces Ruth, and as she is discussing the shallowness of society life, Richard and Bobby Woodward, Ruth's old sweetheart, arrive demanding Ruth's return. Eventually, however, Sylvia regains Richard's love, and Ruth is united with Bobby.
Review Excerpt
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There are films that depict decadence and films that reek of it; Tinsel arrives already marinated in bootleg champagne and the copper tang of predatory whispers. From the first iris-in on Princess Sylvia Carzoni’s black-veiled silhouette—Muriel Ostriche channeling both Lilith and Madonna—we sense we are not in for a polite drawing-room anecdote but a fever dream lit by faulty chandeliers.
Director Ralph Graves (pulling double duty as Bobby) stages the narrative like a danse macabre: every t..."
