Sparrows

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.

We take home video and DVDs for granted now, but for film buffs who grew up prior to the video era it wasn't easy to track down silent movies. They were seldom aired on TV, and when they were shown, unfortunately, they were sometimes treated as laughable relics with "funny" interpolations. Thankfully, vendors such as Blackhawk offered good prints of many vintage titles in 8mm and 16mm, and museums in some cities would schedule occasional screenings. Consequently, as a kid I was able to catch memorable performances by Lon Chaney, Valentino, William S. Hart, and most of the great comedians. Mary Pickford, however, remained elusive. Aside from a few early Biograph dramas most of her movies were locked away in vaults, and shown infrequently. Awareness of her phenomenal fame lingered, but the movies that inspired that fame were difficult to see. I had only a vague sense of Mary's screen persona, and imagined she must have been an earlier incarnation of Shirley Temple, a goody two-shoes with blonde ringlets whose vehicles were mostly tear-jerkers. Eventually, of course, the situation changed, restoration efforts commenced, and Mary's films began to emerge from hibernation. In the 1980s Sparrows became one of the first Pickford classics to become available on good quality VHS, and once I saw it I understood Mary's appeal. Viewing it again recently on the big screen, at a Pickford festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens NY, only confirmed my first impression that this is one of the most beautifully produced silent dramas ever made. It isn't flawless, and it isn't for all tastes, but it's powerful, moving and unforgettable, and the leading lady gives one of her definitive performances.

Sparrows is essentially a thriller, at times almost a horror story. Our setting is a bleak "baby farm" in a swampy bayou that looks like a landscape by Hieronymus Bosch. Mary plays an adolescent known as Mama Molly who acts as a protective maternal figure to a gang of scruffy, starving kids. These are children who have been sent away by families too poor to care for them, well-intentioned folk who naively believe their children will be raised properly. The farm is run by the most evil family you'll find in the movies: old Mr. Grimes, his wife, and her son, played by character actors Gustav von Seyffertitz, Charlotte Mineau, and Spec O'Donnell. Both Mineau and O'Donnell had backgrounds in comedy, but their performances here are deadly earnest and without a trace of humor. Good as they are, however, they're topped by Von Seyffertitz in what he must have recognized as the role of a lifetime. Grimes is a Dickensian monster: a greedy, spindly, limping man with dead eyes and no conscience. His prison-like farm is surrounded by quicksand and alligator infested swampland. The children in his keeping are treated as his property, and he'd sell any one of them down the river for a few coins. At the screening I attended a child in the audience responded to Grimes' evil-doing by loudly announcing: "He's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!" It got a big laugh, but the kid only said aloud what we were all thinking.

Mama Molly occupies the story's moral center, but she's no goody two-shoes. She's been toughened by adversity, and she's fiercely protective of the youngsters in her charge. When Grimes' horrible step-son bullies them she is quick to stand up to him. And when Grimes threatens to punish the children by withholding their dinner, all because of a minor infraction on Molly's part, she volunteers to go without food for two days rather than see the children suffer. She is also the primary caregiver for a sickly baby who, despite her best efforts, dies one night in the loft of the old barn. In a scene some viewers may find a bit sticky, an image of Jesus appears at the moment of the baby's death and carries him away to the after-life. Sentimental? Sure, but it's performed with absolute conviction, and the close-up of Mary that concludes this scene is deeply affecting. (At the recent museum screening I attended we were shown several rejected takes of an earlier version of this scene in which the baby's spirit is carried away to the heavens by a phosphorescent angel. The out-takes were fascinating, but I feel the scene works better as it stands.)

Much of the credit for this film rightfully belongs to the scenic designer, Harry Oliver, and to the crack team of cinematographers, Charles Rosher, Hal Mohr, and Karl Struss. All of these artists have numerous impressive credits to their names, but their collaboration in this case produced something extraordinary, a movie that is exceptionally beautiful in design as well as beautifully photographed and edited. It's said that the production was influenced by the work of such German auteurs as Murnau and Lang, and indeed Sparrows has a distinctly "Germanic" atmosphere, but with greater emphasis on audience empathy; that is, the filmmakers really want you to feel for these kids. Our emotions peak during the climactic escape, when Molly leads the children through the swamp to freedom. Pursued by Grimes' dogs they dash across rocks, narrowly missing the quicksand, then climb trees and crawl over branches hovering just above alligators that swarm and snap. It's an amazingly suspenseful sequence.

Unfortunately, this is not the film's finale. The escape is followed by a gratuitous action sequence involving kidnappers attempting to flee the police by boat, and when this concludes we still have a couple more scenes meant to tie up the plot's loose strands. If the last twenty minutes or so had been reduced to a brisk seven or eight, the movie would have been just about perfect. Nothing can top the escape through the swamp, and it's too bad they made the attempt. Even so, in my opinion Sparrows stands as one of the most memorable works of the silent cinema, and Mary Pickford's crowning achievement.

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.

An introduction explains: "The Devil's share in the world's creation was a certain swampland, a masterpiece of horror; and the Lord, appreciating a good job, let it stand." The Devil's swampland is where Mary Pickford (as Molly) lives, with some orphans and a baby. Ms. Pickford has managed to avoid being thrown in the swamp, over the years, and has assumed the role of "Mother" to the young children. They are kept, as "baby farm" slaves, by wicked Gustav von Seyffertitz (as Mr. Grimes). Mr. von Seyffertitz, Charlotte Mineau (as Mrs. Grimes) and Spec O'Donnell (as son Ambrose) make a frightfully wicked family.

Pickford employs too many of the girlish pouts and lip-twisting grimaces to make this one of her best characterizations; playing "Molly" as a young woman of indeterminate age would have been fine (something Pickford would do in her next film, the extraordinary "My Best Girl"). Otherwise, the Pickford persona works. As might be expected, the production is first class. Harry Oliver's swampy set is magnificent. The direction of William Beaudine and photography of Charles Rosher, Hal Mohr, and Karl Struss likewise superb. The too long conclusion is noticeably anti-climatic.

The special effects and editing are still convincing viewers that Pickford and the children were in some kind of danger during the "alligator-infested swamp escape" sequence. In Booten Herndon's "Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks" (1977) Mr. Mohr explains, "There wasn't an alligator within ten miles of Miss Pickford. Do people think we were crazy? I shot that scene myself… It was hard work for all of us, but the only thing those alligators came close to biting was a chunk of horsemeat." Fewer people questioned Pickford's meeting with Jesus Christ, in an earlier scene.

******** Sparrows (5/14/26) William Beaudine ~ Mary Pickford, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Charlotte Mineau, Spec O'Donnell

According to the film history book on United Artists, Sparrows did not quite as well as expected. I suspect the reason is because Mary Pickford at 33 was getting a little long in the tooth to be believable as an orphan waif. Soon enough her golden curls were shorn and she would finally be taking grown up roles at the end of the silent era.

Sparrows takes a lot from Uncle Tom's Cabin without the racial component. Mary is the oldest of several orphan kids who work just like slaves on the farm of the Simon Legree character Gustav Von Syefertitz who played many villainous roles in silents and his wife Charlotte Mineau who aids and abets her husband's villainy.

Von Seyfertitz is up for all kinds of villainy so when some kidnappers want to stash a baby, rich Roy Stewart's baby he's willing for a cut of the ransom. Later when Stewart agrees to pay the kidnappers come back, but by that time Mary is leading her charges through the swamp to escape as she and the kids have had enough.

Most of the film is a white version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, but the ending is out of David Copperfield.

Sparrows is a great example of the art of Mary Pickford and what her appeal was to the movie-going public. She personified goodness and innocence on the screen despite three marriages. Instead of an icy Ohio River, Mary gets to take her brood through the Louisiana swamps with the ever present danger of alligators. I'm sure for 1926 audiences it must have been quite thrilling.

It will still thrill audiences of a new century.