Is Julio Sandoval (Monroe Salisbury), the half-breed ‘savage’, simply a maniac? The camera seems to be aware of a Beauty and the Beast romance; the idyllic landscapes, the lighting and sets have all been chosen with a delicate eye, in order to create the pleasant visual style of the Bluebird Photoplays. And Rupert Julian’s directorial hallmark of building small situational vignettes is well in evidence in this film.
For today’s audiences, Colleen Moore clearly outshines the rest of the cast, but she is not even mentioned by contemporary reviewers. With restraint and wistfulness she plays Lizette, a non-white girl ready to resort to a knife or to her female charms when necessary. In love with Sandoval, she would be the good choice, which he fails to make, preferring (invariably, inevitably, racists assume) “Skin white as milk and golden curls”, e.g. Marie Louise (Ruth Clifford).
So, a white female threatened by a non-white male is on the agenda. The crucial meeting between the two unfolds in two mirroring episodes by the river: first, a nostalgic reminiscence of Sandoval heroically saving the small girl; later, a scene of sexual danger looming large. After Sandoval watches the thinly dressed adult woman from behind the trees, he kidnaps her and intends to rape her in his surprisingly cozy cabin. “Variety” reveals the ending that is not present in the surviving print: Sandoval will die, after having helped rescue officer McKeever from the hands of the crook Bedotte (probably of French origin; the French have never been true-blue White). Marie Louise and the officer, her pale fiancé all along the film, spend their honeymoon in the cabin of the late half-villain.

Juha Kindberg and Mariann Lewinsky