Jon Mirsalis on Piano Griffith's last great film is a sublime example of his art, combining the intimacy of Broken Blossoms with the spectacle of The Birth of a Nation to tell the story of two adopted sisters who are separated and become caught up in the tide of the French Revolution. Lillian and Dorothy Gish star as the two orphans, one sighted and one blind, who suffer innumerable misadventures and near-misses (including one at the guillotine) before they are reunited. It is fascinating to see how Griffith worked his favorite themes into the fabric of a story of the French Revolution, continuing his portrait of female victimization and expanding his patterns of dualities to include Danton and Robespierre among the noble vs. venal males in his coterie. Henri Langlois once wrote, "Orphans of the Storm...will make those who are looking for historical accuracy simply laugh. But once we...see that the film is a pure fiction about oppressors and oppressed and the explosion of individual and social passions, then we can see that this film is one of Griffith's most brilliant, in which perhaps he was able to capture qualities of the old masters and the frescoes of the Quattrocento, a film in which he pushed his powers of expression as far as they could go" (in Trois Cents Ans de Cinema: Ecrits).