AllMovie

The outskirts of Paterson, New Jersey proved an interesting substitute for 18th-century Paris in Biograph's French Revolution melodrama The Oath and the Man. A band of Revolutionaries is led by a man with strong religious convictions. Though he does so at great personal risk, the hero resists all temptations to be dissuaded from his solid Christian values. Thus, when the crowd cries out for the blood of the captured aristocrats, their leader refuses to acknowledge their demands, preferring mercy over revenge. Films like Oath and the Man can now be regarded as warm-ups for D.W.Griffith's 1921 French Revolution epic Orphans of the Storm.