A film that bridges Borzage's early Westerns and the late-silent romances, Lazybones stars Westerner Buck Jones as a country layabout who adopts a baby girl when the mother (Zasu Pitts, in a beautiful performance) is forced by her own puritanical mother to abandon the child. The romantic longing here is that of Jones for the child, as she grows into a woman. "Borzage conveys Lazybones's growing desire with an explicitness no less powerful for its gentleness, making us uncomfortably complicit....In this gentle masterpiece, Borzage tells a tale of universally unfulfilled desire....Like Sherwood Anderson, Borzage manages a vision of small-town American life based on the repression of desire, yet still manages to be sympathetic towards his characters." (Tom Gunning)