User Reviews

Whencver a picture is so enjoyable and good as this, and so well acted, set and photographed, it is hard to criticise it at all. One feels that it merely ought to have a star pasted after it. Yet it starts out as a thoroughgoing, rollicking comedy, and closes in a very tragic situation. In art that desires to make the deepest impression possible, this is not defensible. Tragedy is always religious, whether it be Chinese, Indian, Greek or Christian; comedy never is. There are comic moments in many tragedies, resting places, nodes, but comedy is essentially lawless. Nature never puts on the comic mask for more than a moment at a time. Real life is essentially tragic. And to mix comedy and tragedy in blocks, so to speak, as this picture does, offers suggestions to the mind that are at war with each other. Ellen wanted to do something useful, wanted to care for a blind man. She was coming to answer an advertisement and seeing Robert with goggles on thought him the blind man. He saw her through the goggles and decided that it would be pleasant to remain the blind man. She read to him for a day before she saw through his pretense and left in great indignation. This occupies half the reel; is not a picture of life, but is very amusing. Now comes the tragic picture of real life. He loses his sight. She can care for him now and he won't have to pretend. - The Moving Picture World, December 9, 1911