User Reviews

While the picture does not give a closely knit, single-situation drama, it does give a story very dramatic and clearly articulated, one that rises on an even slope, becomes more and more interesting, to a very effective and emotional climax. Human hearts can hardly know life except by experience. Like the inventor's wife in this picture, we are often asleep and don't see our own true good until something, often some little thing, wakes us, and then, like her, we see. Her husband had been blinded by an electric flash while working on an invention. He couldn't go around with her to dances and good times as formerly, and she was led into temptation. She was about to leave him for another man. Packing up her things, she came on the dress of her baby who had died and this brought her to herself. It sounds slight, but it is not so in the picture, which is very affecting. The film's weak point is that on her coming back she finds her blind husband about to commit suicide. These suicides and attempted suicides are not fair. They criticize life unjustly, give it a stab in the back. There is more to life than material happiness. It wouldn't have weakened this picture one whit, if the man had recognized that. Besides, these suicides are quite conventional; they've been used and therefore they are used again. Spectators don't hanker for them. They are the easiest way out. - The Moving Picture World, November 18, 1911