Luck of Roaring Camp

The reproduction of Bret Harte's most famous story is an achievement deserving the highest praise and when the work is done with such fidelity to the spirit of the time and occasion, the wild, rough, mining camp life around the time of "Forty-nine" is so virile with human interest, and withal so typically American that one welcomes this picture because it puts in concrete form the characteristics of a time and the appearance of the men who made it. Some of the present generation have seen something approaching it, but none know much of what occurred a half century ago, excepting as they read of it. Adequate illustration is scarcely ever attempted, and more often than not when it is there is an artificial air about it which seems to stamp it as tainted with imaginary scenes and situations. But the Edison producers are not open to that charge. They have reproduced a typical mining camp of the time and present it with all the picturesque features of the original. The arrival of the widow and her child; her death soon after and the heterogeneous collection for the benefit of the child; his discovery of gold and adoption by the camp are all reproduced so faithfully that the figures seem almost like real personages as they move across the screen, performing their parts silently, but none the less graphically. After one has seen this excellent picture he will have a better idea of that wild, picturesque life which has passed away forever. - The Moving Picture World, February 5, 1910