User Reviews

Forgotten early movie star Edwin August is a lumberjack whose temptation to steal after losing at cards is assuaged by the sound of a woman singing a song that reminds him of his childhood sweetheart in this J. Searle Dawley film for Edison. Unremarkable apart from its location shots, and one scene in which the camera slowly pulls back from August as he listens at a door.

The trade press was almost invariably grovelling when it came to Edison (there is a chapter somewhere to be written on his relationship with the media). This film is fascinating because it is an elaborate story and an elaborate narrative (not only is most of it told in flashback but there is a flashback within the flashback shown in split-screen) - all for what is essentially an advertising film for the Edison phonograph. In the studio-scene where the song (Annie Laurie of all things) is being recorded, we even get a brief glimpse of the twisted old wizard himself.

The broad theme - the effects of a song on listeners - had already been used by Griffith in his 1909 version of the Browning poem Pippa Passes and would be used even more elaborately and yuckily in his 1914 Majestic feature Home Sweet Home but Edison and Dawley have quite simply (but at the same time very elaborately) recuperated the theme for an exercise in publicity.

A story that will touch the hearts of many because it brings back long forgotten, or only dimly remembered scenes wherein some old and favorite song has played an important part. The visions which it brings to the lumberman in the Canadian Northwest could probably be duplicated in one way or another by every middle-aged man or woman. Perhaps not always with the glamor of the romance exhibited here, but in some way. The phonograph, too, has an important part, and as the familiar strains of "Annie Laurie" pour from the instrument the man's visions are all of the long ago. Then comes the romance, which is well told and somehow does not seem improbable. If the old song, heard in the room above, prevented the man from committing a crime, it is probably no more than the same song has done before. And after it is over and the lovers are reunited one's imagination may run riot in the happy possibilities of the future. The setting is in the Canadian Northwest and the picture is well worth seeing for that alone. Giant trees, lumber camps and lumbermen and an outlook on the grandeur of that scenery. Apart from the interesting story, this picture is worthy of commendation. It is a welcome addition to Edison's series depicting the life of that new and rapidly developing section of the world. - The Moving Picture World, October 22, 1910