User Reviews

These regeneration pictures are of inestimable value when they picture life truthfully enough to convince. Their purpose is to show the human qualities in man as triumphing over the bestial. But they, above all other kinds of pictures, must be sound, must ring true. Very few of them move us so deeply that we remember them or find them useful; they seldom have the clear, true note. In this picture, two people are turned from evil ways and take up humanity again through fear of being stumbling blocks to a little child. This child, left by the death of its mother without protection, fell into the hands of a fast woman, mistress of the child's father, who had deserted its mother, his wife, years before. The finding of the child, with its concomitant circumstances, kept the woman from drowning herself. The state of the woman's mind when she had brought the child to her home is not clear. The imagination is left to grope its own way into the situation. Perhaps her soul had been startled into wakefulness by its emotional reaction from the suicide idea which she had entertained. She reforms at once so that she can be worthy of keeping the child. Cigarettes and whiskey go by the board, while the child is still sleeping. One can't help contrasting this with a French picture of about a year ago called "Sans Famille." I think, in which a little French lad, adopted by a rough American miner, slowly, step by step, works a great change in the big-hearted man's manners and ways of life. This picture provided means by which the father recognizes his child. He takes it away from the woman, and he, too, reforming, leads a better life. The child eventually makes the man marry the woman, which is a habit and custom with such pictures. Now, everyone knows that regeneration is a hard and painful change, and no picture that ignores its difficulties can in any vivid way realize our human lives to us. A new player, Miss Gardner, takes the woman's part and gives bright promise of fine work. Miss Lewis, who already has won laurels, plays the deserted wife. - The Moving Picture World, November 4, 1911