Sparrows

This is an excellent melodrama, with a fine performance by Mary Pickford and much more besides. The settings, characters, and photography create an interesting and memorable world in which the adventures of Molly (Pickford) and the orphans take place, in a story with plenty of drama and suspense.

Molly was an ideal role for Pickford, who could make such a character appealing and very sympathetic without going overboard. Though most of the film is quite serious, she also makes good use of the occasional comic moments. The settings in the swamp and on the farm run by the vile Grimes are nicely conceived and created. The sets are filled with careful atmospheric detail, and the photography is excellent. The Grimes family are very good villains, and Gustav von Seyffertitz gives a fine portrayal of the nasty farmer.

There is plenty of action and there are some fine scenes, leading up to an excellent suspense sequence in the swamp, with plenty of thrills and excitement. The only thing that keeps it from being a nearly perfect film is that the last part does drag on just a bit, becoming rather anticlimactic, and it would have been an even better movie if it were maybe 5-10 minutes shorter. But that doesn't change the fact that overall it's great fun to watch.

If you are a fan of silent melodramas, make sure to see "Sparrows" if you get the chance.

Sparrows (1926)

*** (out of 4)

An evil man, his wife and son are stealing orphans and taking them into the deep swampland where the children are treated as slaves. The latest kid they've kidnapped turns out to be the child of a rich man. Fearing the police, the family plans to kill the kids but the oldest orphan (Mary Pickford) plans a daring escape through the swamp. The villains of this film have to rank as some of the most hated in movie history. Pickford does a wonderful job in her role and director William Beaudine also adds several nice touches. The escape through the swamp is full of suspense as the children must face quicksand as well as alligators. The final act hurts the film but everything leading up to it is very well done. It's interesting to note that Pickford had Beaudine blacklisted in Hollywood because he forced her and the children to risk their lives by acting with real alligators. This here probably explains why a respected director ended up making "B" and "Z" films like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.

United Artists in the mid-1920's stood outside the motion picture industry's block booking system. It owned no theaters and did not have enough films to offer them in blocks. This meant each of the UA producers (Griffith, Fairbanks, Chaplin, and Pickford) had to finance each film individually; not an easy thing with the rising costs of producing long features. While Griffith was digging himself into a big hole (which would ultimately cost him his production company) making epic films and trying to top his early successes, Pickford prudently operated on a smaller scale. The irony being that she produced the type of folksy stuff that Griffith had once done so well and so profitably.

"Sparrows" was her last appearance as a teenager; her choice because even in her thirties she would have been physically believable in these roles for a couple more years. Most often described as "Dickensian" because of its gloomy feel and slightly off-kilter production design, "Sparrows" is the original "Series of Unfortunate Events". It is regarded as the least dated of her pictures (maybe of all silents), fitting because it does not seem at all dated. Even the humor seems contemporary with little Molly misquoting bible verses with stuff like: "Let not thy right cheek know what thy left cheek is getting".

"Sparrows" is also more perennially appealing than any silent film. In fact you have to go all the way until 1933's "It Happened One Night" to actually supplant it. But it is a serious subject as baby farms are a historical fact and wealthy parents had reasons to fear kidnapping. The kidnapping in "Sparrows" has an eerie similarity to that of the Lindbergh baby, which would not take place until seven years "after" the film.

The "look" of the film reflects the German expressionist style and should delight Lemony Snicket fans and anyone who gets off on creepy-strange beauty. Set designer Harry Oliver "aged the tree stumps with blowtorches, and the entire picture has that netherworld quality of a slightly stylized environment that could only be created in a movie studio". Watch for the early scene where the baby farm operator crushes the little doll and drops it into the quicksand where it slowly disappears.

You also see a lot of Pickford's technique in Hal Roach's "Little Rascals". Check out the sequence when Little Splutters is leaving and his imprisoned friends are waving goodbye from inside the barn, by passing their hands through the slats. In fact Spec O'Donnell, who plays nasty stepson Ambrose, would later be a Roach regular. He is responsible for the film's first big laugh when he beans Molly with a turnip while she is trying to get the baby to stop crying. It is totally unexpected and even the baby finds it funny.

Also of note is the dream sequence where Jesus comes to take the baby to heaven. Modern special effects could not improve on what they got using a simple matte exposure process. A similar technique worked so well with the swamp scenes that a legend grew up that Pickford and the children were actually at risk from the live alligators used in the scenes. Probably no silent managed a more genuinely suspenseful sequence than when they are crossing a rotting tree limb which is slowly cracking and dipping toward the water full of hungry alligators.

Gustav von Seyffertitz does great as the evil Mr. Grimes (an early Snidley Whiplash) and is one of the best bad guys to come out of the silent era.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Excellent popcorn movie that serves as a perfect introduction to silent cinema or to Mary Pickford, who at age 34, and still looking youthful, gives a top-notch performance in her final juvenile role. Pickford stars as Molly, ingenious caregiver to a band of orphans held captive on the bayou farm of evil Mr. Grimes - played with steely menace by Von Seyffertitz. The film's title is a reference to Matthew 6:26, a Bible verse Molly teaches her children when they complain about their situation. The film's religious symbolism goes even further, when one of Molly's youngest dies and Christ appears to carry the child home. Grimes strikes a deal with kidnappers to keep the infant daughter of a wealthy young widower until the ransom money can be collected. He assigns the baby to Molly after the death of her "sparrow". When one of the orphans escapes, Grimes plots to dispose of the whole group in the alligator-infested bayou. When Molly learns of Grimes' plan, she plots a daring escape with her band.

An all around excellent film, and a strong influence on many kids adventure films such as vastly inferior big-budget blockbusters like Goonies or Spy Kids.

Although this is Mary Pickford's film, it also presents Von Seyffertitz with the best role of his career. Needing little in the way of make-up, the gaunt actor adds to his frighteningly sinister appearance by flourishing his claw-like hands and limping in awkward yet forceful strides. Child actor, Spec O'Donnell, who usually played comic roles, is also most effective. But it is, of course, Mary herself who focuses most of our attention, not only in the hair-raising scenes in which she is pursued by Grimes but in the many heartrending sequences in which she protects her "sparrows".

William Beaudine later became Hollywood's number one hack, but in silent days—indeed until around the mid-1930s—he was a very polished director who could not only draw great performances from his players but add immeasurably to a film's atmosphere and visual effect. Here, his compositions are indelibly terrifying.