User Reviews

Surely no more effective story was ever told than this. Falsely accused of having disclosed his country's naval secrets, a young officer is unjustly condemned by court martial to deprivation of home, country and flag. He is personally degraded by his superiors, then turned adrift. In scene after scene he is spurned and scorned as a traitor, and even when he saves an American sailor from assassination and puts to sea on a ship to fight the enemy he is mercilessly turned down by those who discover his identity. But he triumphs in the very hour of death. The flag has been carried away by a shot from the masthead. Up goes our unfortunate hero with a new flag, triumphantly places it in position, and as he sees its folds proudly unfurled a bullet finds its billet and he falls dead to the deck, where his body is reverently covered up. His country has unjustly ruined him and he has a magnificent revenge, for he dies in defense of that country. The Edison Company tell this story in a series of highly dramatic scenes full of action and decision of movement. There is not a pause throughout the entire picture. From the very moment when a spy and a traitor steal the naval plans in the absence of the young officer, upon whom suspicion is thus cast, every moment in the piece is finely dramatic. At the court martial his rage at the injustice of his service finds vent in an attack on the flag itself. In subsequent scenes, where his former superior officers discover his identity and publicly denounce him as a traitor, degrading him in the eyes of men, women and children, there are some fine moments of acting. The piece is exceedingly well acted throughout. Indeed, in this respect the acting strikes us as being quite natural and well restrained. Under this head, that of the acting side, the Edison Company have sent out a conspicuously fine picture, the finest, indeed, that they have produced this year. So great, in fact, that if this standard of quality is kept up, then the contest for pride of place amongst American film manufacturers must become exceedingly exciting. The photography of this fine picture, which shows, by the way, with great vividness the carnage of a naval battle has been carried out with great skill and attention to the finer details of positive making. The negative has been well exposed, the positive made from it carefully printed, developed and tinted. – The Moving Picture World, July 3, 1909