AllMovie

After Lady Audley's Secret and The Two Orphans failed at the box office, Fox was in no mood to tinker with Theda Bara's image any longer. With this picture, she went back to vamping. She's Rosa, a young and passionate Italian woman here. Rosa gets mixed up with a mobster, Pietro (Warner Oland, who then was just beginning his film career, and elopes to New York with him. Luigi (William E. Shay), the boy she left behind, follows her to America. During the Procession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, he steals the Jewels of the Madonna, and gives them to Rosa. When she wears them to the mob headquarters, Pietro denounces her as sacrilegious. She goes crazy and is torn to shreds by an angry religious throng, while Luigi, shattered by the theft he has committed, kills himself before an altar. Sin sold a ton of tickets, was banned in Georgia and Ohio (Bara's home state) and inched its star ever closer to permanent typecasting, even though press of the day reveals that most of her fans knew she was just Theodosia Goodman from Cincinnati.