In 1865, youngster Dick Heldar is briefly blinded when his girlfriend Maisie accidentally fires his pistol too close to his head.

When the natives attack suddenly, he saves the life of his friend, war correspondent "Torp" Torpenhow, but receives a head wound as a result.

Liking the financial rewards, Dick is persuaded to sanitize his gritty realism to make his works more attractive to the masses.

When his vision starts to blur, he goes to see a doctor who gives him a grim prognosis: as a result of his old war injury, he will go blind in a year if he avoids strain, "not very long" if he does not.

Sensing that the British cavalry is about to deploy, Dick has Torp to direct him into the charge, where he is shot and killed by a native.

Frank Nugent, critic for The New York Times, praised the film, calling it a "letter-perfect edition of Kipling's 'The Light That Failed'".

[2] On May 29, 1946, in Bristol, England, cinema manager Robert Parrington Jackson was shot in his office during an evening showing of The Light That Failed.