No, this film is not Seventh Heaven but it already has the hallmark of a Borzage film - the powerful identification with his subject which gives his best films their strength and (perhaps an inevitable concomitant particularly in a US film) the continual tendency to sentimentalise which is what mars even his best films and ruins his worst ones. It is curious to note that both of the great US directors to emerge from the Ince stable at this time, Borzage and Ford, have (in different degrees) very much the same strengths and weaknesses.
The scenes involving the orphan/urchin Margy (played by Pauline Starke) are all a bit "cutesy" à la Pickford and dissolve into utter slop as she gets older, and the comedy is feeble, but the first part of the film - the Kafkaesque tale of the hunted man, desperate only to see his newborn child once a year, is gripping and Jack Curtis gives an utterly convincing performance as the bemused "outlaw", victim of an unfortunate combination of circumstances, on the run from the Canadian Mounted Police for no crime he has committed. The story in itself is not that original (all the various elements can be found in other films of the period) but Borzage's treatment is at moments exceptional. Unfortunately by the time the story of the hunted man resumes at the very end of the film, sentiment has entirely gained the upper hand and the film simply peters out....
The scenes involving the orphan/urchin Margy (played by Pauline Starke) are all a bit "cutesy" à la Pickford and dissolve into utter slop as she gets older, and the comedy is feeble, but the first part of the film - the Kafkaesque tale of the hunted man, desperate only to see his newborn child once a year, is gripping and Jack Curtis gives an utterly convincing performance as the bemused "outlaw", victim of an unfortunate combination of circumstances, on the run from the Canadian Mounted Police for no crime he has committed. The story in itself is not that original (all the various elements can be found in other films of the period) but Borzage's treatment is at moments exceptional. Unfortunately by the time the story of the hunted man resumes at the very end of the film, sentiment has entirely gained the upper hand and the film simply peters out....