Following on from Broken Blossoms in 1919 and Way Down East in 1920, DW Griffith, writing under the name of Gaston de Tolignac, here transposed Adolphe Philippe Dennery's play to the time of the French Revolution, built a period Paris on 14 acres at his Mamaroneck studios, and had his luminous star, Lillian Gish, and her sister, Dorothy, play the orphaned sisters caught up in the bloody events. The plot, bursting with colourful and melodramatic incident, has Lillian, the carer of her blind sister, sent to the guillotine for harbouring her aristocrat lover (the splendid Joseph Schildkraut making his screen debut), only to be saved at the last minute by the intervention of Danton (Monte Blue). Heavily sentimental and marred by Griffith's taste for unsubtle and inappropriate comedy, this isn't quite a silent masterpiece, but it is, nonetheless, visually spectacular and largely absorbing.

France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.