Norma Talmadge was one of the great screen stars of the 1920s, yet few of her films are available today. The Library of Congress recently acquired and has begun preserving a number of Talmadge silents. Previously unknown, The Lady was a Norma Talmadge production. Nitrate deterioration obliterated reel two of the film before it was acquired and preserved, but as Tom Gunning observes, "enough is there to establish the film as an unconventional melodrama with an extraordinary performance by Talmadge herself. After being rejected by her upper-class husband during a vacation in the south of France and discovering she is pregnant, Talmadge wanders into a Marseilles dive....(Her) plight and grit eventually convert the denizens of this underworld into a supportive substitute family...display(ing) Borzage's knack for turning the depths into a humane counter-society...In The Lady, Borzage not only reverses class allegiances but refuses to let Talmadge return her child to his father's family....The sacrificing mother in this melodrama stands firm against the power of patriarchy."