Released only two weeks before actor/director Victor Sjöström's 'Terje Vigen', the film was more noticed abroad. Already in 1918 did French critic Louis Delluc praised the film, and film historian Georges Sadoul writes about its complex narrative technique in his 1952 'Histoire général du Cinéma'.
Unusual for its time, the film is told in flashback, starting with the death of Dr. Monro. This method would later be used by f. ex. Akira Kurosawa in 'Rashomon' (1950).
The film was an unusually large export success. It was sold in no less than 38 copies to Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Balkans, Great Britain, France, Holland, Spain, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Chile and the United States.