User Reviews

When representing the intensity of human passion the Vitagraph actors display an unusual understanding of human nature and the influences which in some mysterious way actuate its impulses. Here is a strongly dramatic picture because it depicts the transition of human passion and offers a concrete example of the way some small thing may change the entire future course of a life. Happily the producers have shown how a life may be influenced for good. Too often the evil influence is permitted to predominate. The murderer's hand is stayed by a girl singing a hymn. He quietly submits to be again led away to prison, and in place of being one of the ugliest and most intractable convicts he is quite the revers. Elemental human passion is such an unknown influence in all lives and the means which change the current of one's future are so subtle that it is unsafe to declare that any man is either permanently good or bad. To say that this is one of the most powerful pictures ever produced is a trite remark. We have studied its effect upon several audiences. It is not the kind of picture calculated to create applause, no more than we would think of applauding an eloquent sermon, yet it brought hearty plaudits, which came as a relief after the intense silence which prevailed while it was on the screen. – The Moving Picture World, June 4, 1910