TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

wes-connors Mary Pickford (as Jerusha "Judy" Abbott) is found, as a baby, in a garbage dump. Orphaned, she is brought to the "John Grier Home", where young boys and girls are treated more like convicts than children. By the time she is 12, little Mary is leading the orphans in a strike against eating prunes. Some years later, Ms. Pickford is the beneficiary of a lucky, life-changing event: one of the orphanage's new trustees wants to sponsor an orphan's higher education; and Pickford is chosen. At college, Pickford is a fetching young woman, which sends Cupid's arrows flying. Love-struck Princeton man Marshall Neilan (as Jimmie Mc Bride) and "older man" (as Jarvis Pendleton) vie for Pickford's hand in marriage. Pickford becomes a writer; her first effort fails, but she instinctively follows the advice "write what you know" in creating a successful tome about orphans. Finally, Pickford must choose her man, and payback her "mysterious benefactor".Some of "Daddy-Long-Legs" doesn't ring true; vignettes are cute, in isolation, but add little to the overall film; it's obvious, for example, that the children experience some childhood fun, which is said to be completely absent. And, the cruelty of the "John Grier Home" is hardly comparable to a prison! You may also wonder why a fully clothed boy is considered "naked", how a baby might have digested a mouth organ, how that girl got in and out of the well, and other stuff. The film is not at all unpredictable.However, Mary Pickford is outstanding. She very believably plays "Judy" - growing from a precocious 12-year-old girl to young career woman. As the film progresses, Pickford seems to add layers upon her character. For example, in some later scene, beginning at a society party where Pickford admires some ancestral portraits; watch, as the party progresses, both Pickford's past, and future, register on her face. Pickford constructs her character extremely well.Director Marshall Neilan (who also appears, as Jimmie Mc Bride) was an important Pickford collaborator; and the supporting cast is delightful. Wesley Barry is wonderful as Pickford's early orphan pal; he manages to steal scenes from Mary Pickford - 11-year-old Barry play "drunk" better than Pickford! Carrie Clark Ward is delightful as love-weary "Mrs. Semple", and Fay Lemport (as Angelina Wyckoff) shows how pampered, selfish little girls grow up. "Daddy-Long-Legs" was filmed again and again, but this is the definitive version, thanks, mainly, to Mary. ******** Daddy-Long-Legs (5/11/19) Marshall Neilan ~ Mary Pickford, Mahlon Hamilton, Wesley Barry

drednm Another terrific Mary Pickford performance and film. Daddy-Long-Legs is a familiar story, but the Pickford version accentuates the comedy and leaves the sappy romance to the horrid 50s version with Astaire and Caron. Sweet and innocent, this film has several memorable comic moments, including Mary getting drunk with a fellow orphan (Wesley Barry?) and leaving the jug for a dog. Very funny. A little tipsy, Mary also slides down banisters and accidentally knocks "Stink Weed" down a well. Oops! This film is a little unusual for a Pickford picture since it allows Mary to grow up. She gets to go to college and be wooed by her roommate's uncle (Mahlon Hamilton). She's also pursued by Jimmie (Marshall Neilan, who also directed the film). Milla Davenport is the orphanage director and Fay Lemport is the nasty Angelina.Nice comedic touches throughout to keep it all light and entertaining. The version I saw was clean, had beautiful title cards, and good (new) score my Maria Newman. All very impressive for a 1919 film. This film seems miles away from Pickford's 1917 Pride of the Clan, but she had been in over 200 films by the time she made this! Pickford was one of the greats, a true giant in Hollywood, and it's too bad she's so forgotten now. I've never seen a Pickford film I didn't like.

ColeSear What I really want to know after watching this film is what happened? Please excuse me for sounding like I'm using latent feminist criticism here, which I'm not but I really dislike the change in Judy's (Mary Pickford's) character after about the first 50 minutes of this film. Yes, there is the great silent humor by both Pickford and the boy when they get drunk which rivals the genius of Chaplin. There is also The Prune Strike and Judy's defense of the baby and Bosco against the harshness of the Trustees/ Aristocrats. She seems like a Dickensian Joan of Arc who will one day save all the children from the harshness of the orphanage.Now I'm not against Ironic twists of fate because she is set up by the headmaster who wants to be rid of her. So a trustee is coerced to pay for her education and Judy then falls in love with him not knowing this man is also the trustee, when a surprise is obvious to me (I am easily mesmerized and don't usually guess how films end) someone has done something wrong. Not only that but when she finds out Daddy-Long-Legs is the man she wants to marry she curses him and marries him anyway? While Pickford's performance is excellent throughout I cannot understand why she is so pleased at conforming. With all the liberal-minded titles which are sometimes poetic and sometimes just too much suddenly we are give a tale where a woman who hated the rich is now constantly surrounded by aristocracy at school, marries a man she used to fear, and she lives happily ever after? She could've shutdown the orphanage, reformed it or adopted a kid but we get none of that. And it left me scratching my head.Not only that as soon as she gets to college there is a non-diegetic inclusion of these baby cupids that make absolutely no sense and make this film seem like it was two stories spliced together when they would've been better as two separate shorts instead of as one feature. On the plus side it was enjoyable watching a beautifully restored, shot and finally a tinted silent film. Mary Pickford is a film legend who was so natural as a visual performer that words to her would just be clutter. It's just a shame to be exposed to her in a film where her character's motivation is ill-defined.

Snow Leopard A wonderful and multi-faceted performance by Mary Pickford turns a pleasant but somewhat routine story into a fine film that is very enjoyable to watch. The story gives her a chance to use a lot of different talents, and whenever she is on-screen, which is most of the time, there is something worth seeing.Pickford is equally charming (it seems impossible to write about a Pickford film without using that word) and equally believable as a young orphan and as a college girl. And she is equally good at creating laughs, expressing feelings, and evoking sympathy - often all at the same time, especially in the orphanage scenes, which have some of this film's best material. There is some excellent comedy that keeps the story from becoming overly cute or sentimental, and she makes the most of all of it.They put some real work into the title cards for this one, filling them with some good art work and also using them at times for some well-chosen commentary. A couple of the other cast members are pretty good, too, although it is definitely Pickford that makes this so worthwhile.This is an engaging little gem from the silent era, and a great example of what it was that made "America's Sweetheart" so popular.