This beautiful silent directed by William deMille (brother of Cecil B. and scenarist for his early films) evokes the mood and, to a remarkable degree, the intimate feelings of an important era for Americans--just after World War I, when large numbers of women began to take their first, very personal steps toward emancipation. The story, based on a popular 1920 novel, takes up the common case of the spinster who lives as an unpaid drudge in the household of a relative. But for Miss Lulu Bett, the typical tale takes an unlikely and uncomfortable turn when marriage vows recited jokingly at a dinner party turn out to be binding. Eileen Bowser of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, writes: “William deMille gives us a picture of the oppressiveness of life in an American small town in the twenties, the narrow lives, the pride and the fear of scandal, and the Jazz Age restlessness of the young. He avoids the theatrical and melodramatic. This is a story of ordinary people, and he defines them by suggestive details: ...the daily humdrum routine of cooking, eating, washing the dishes. He makes use of the intimacy of the camera: his actors are restrained, his close-ups of them reserved for moments of dramatic tension.... Lois Wilson gives a particularly subtle performance as Miss Lulu Bett...”