This film marked a substantial change from the historical spectacles which first brought Bernhardt to narrative film. For the first time we see Bernhardt move away from the obvious artifice of her earlier theatrical costumes and sets. Playing the role of a modest wife and mother, and then (after the suicide of her husband) the proprietor of a provincial stationer’s store, Bernhardt negotiates the contemporary problems of gambling, single motherhood, adultery, and criminal violence. Shot soon after the amputation of her right leg, this film was seen as a way to maintain the visibility of an actress for whom international travel and live theatrical performance were (supposedly) no longer valid options. As a review in the New York Times explained, “The film was so arranged before it was sent to the country that all evidence of the actress’s lameness because of her artificial leg have been deleted. So the film, as it reached America, never shows the actress walking. In every scene in which she appears she is shown either seated or standing, and whenever she starts to walk the scene is immediately changed through the devices of the switchback, the cut-in, or the printed legend.”

Victoria Duckett