“The Milky Way is almost as valuable a find as John Ford's first feature, the 1917 Straight Shooting, which was rediscovered some 15 years ago. But whereas the Ford film was at least well documented, nothing was known about The Milky Way....
“W.S. Van Dyke was a major director, both commercially and artistically, though the latter is often downplayed because of the former; his films include...The Thin Man...and San Francisco.... The Milky Way is a major find as the first extant example of his purely dramatic work. Silent independent films are often unpretentious in the extreme; they were often also very dull.... Only those of you who know the grimness of the really cheap silent independent films will realize what a really good little film this is.... It moves briskly, always a Van Dyke trademark, and it is made with care.... Excellent use is made of outdoor locations - both rural and in Los Angeles streets.... The only thing that might raise an eyebrow today is a blatant racial slur in the titles, but even this is valuable in indicating how casually such slurs were taken then.... Van Dyke's fidelity to the methods of his mentor, D.W. Griffith, is quite apparent throughout the film...(which) like so many films of the '20s...espouses the end-of-the-rainbow theme of the trekking from the country to the big city as the only route to success....” --William K. Everson