The version of the film I saw only ran for ten minutes and didn't have any intertitles, but then it didn't need to because the story is so simple to follow. I don't really think I missed out on much, losing those six minutes, because the film is essentially the same incident - burly Russian peasant Ivan, newly arrived on America's shores, beating his poor wife - who we first meet hitched up to Ivan's cart next to the donkey - only to find himself set straight by outraged US citizens repeated three times. Ivan finally learns his lesson after six months hard labour and emerges from prison a transformed man, loving and appreciative of his wife.
This isn't a very funny film and, if it weren't for the fact that the accompanying soundtrack was of a humorous (but anachronistic) country and western style, the film could just as easily be viewed as a melodrama. It somehow seems all the more surprising, given its crude stereotyping, that the film was made by Solax, the company owned by French immigrant Alice Guy and her British husband Blache.
This isn't a very funny film and, if it weren't for the fact that the accompanying soundtrack was of a humorous (but anachronistic) country and western style, the film could just as easily be viewed as a melodrama. It somehow seems all the more surprising, given its crude stereotyping, that the film was made by Solax, the company owned by French immigrant Alice Guy and her British husband Blache.