This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of silent-film actress Mary Pickford's screen debut. Pickford, the world's first great movie star, had a profound impact on the film industry. Born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Pickford was part of a family of touring actors, before being signed by silent-film pioneer D.W. Griffith. A creative leader, she was one of the first to break from stage techniques, developing instead a performing “vocabulary” used in the early silents, as well as a style of psychological realism that still influences acting today. She was one of the earliest actors to have her own production company, and was a co-founder of United Artists, the first independent, artist-run studio in cinema history. (Her partners were Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks.)
Pickford's nickname, America's Sweetheart, has led many to believe she played saccharine characters. In fact, she worked in many genres, from slapstick (Suds)totragedy (Stella Maris), and was featured in adaptations of works ranging fromchildren's literature (The Poor Little Rich Girl)to Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew). But she was most beloved for the roles she called “hellcats” – rebellious young women who had good on their side but didn't hesitate to swing a fist.
One of her most successful and memorable turns was in William Beaudine's Sparrows. Pickford plays Mollie, a teenager on a baby farm in the Louisiana bayou. The owners of the farm, the vile Grimes clan, offer to care for children of families experiencing hardship, then exploit and neglect the little ones in the most appalling manner. Assuming the role of a substitute mother, Mollie struggles valiantly to save her charges, but when the Grimes's plot to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy family goes awry, she's forced to take drastic and dangerous action.
Praised for merging the social concerns of Charles Dickens with the techniques of German expressionism, Sparrows is a gripping melodrama that possesses the sophisticated assurance of many later works of the silent period.
Steve Gravestock
Restored from a tinted nitrate print by the Library of Congress, the film will be presented with musical accompaniment by Gabriel Thibaudeau, who has composed scores for numerous silent films, including the Robert Flaherty classic Nanook of the North. That score had its world premiere at the Festival in 2005.
Thanks to Christel Schmidt from the Library of Congress for her assistance in programming the film.
William Beaudine was an American film actor and director whose career spanned six decades. He began as a properties assistant to D.W. Griffith before acting in a number of silent films. He went on to direct over three hundred short and feature-length films, as well as numerous television programmes. Among his more prominent films are Little Annie Rooney (25), Sparrows (26), The Old-Fashioned Way (34), Boys Will Be Boys (35) and Where There's a Will (36).