Through the Back Door

This Mary Pickford feature has a little of everything, and while it hardly measures up to her best movies, it's a good movie with some enjoyable comedy and some thoughtful moments. The story is quite predictable, but it gives Pickford a chance to play the kind of character that her audiences loved, and that she herself portrayed so believably.

Pickford plays Jeanne, a young Belgian who is left behind when her mother is remarried to a rich American. When the war breaks out, Jeanne joins many other refugees, and heads to America to rejoin her mother, whom she finds in the midst of her own troubles. There are numerous complications, most of them quite familiar from other melodramas of the era. The supporting cast is solid, with Gertrude Astor particularly believable as the mother.

The main attraction of the movie is to see Pickford play the kind of resourceful, ever-hopeful young woman that allowed her to use her wide range of acting skills. The comic parts are good, and they include the sequence with Jeanne's innovative way of scrubbing a muddy floor. Pickford has good interactions with the other characters, both in dramatic scenes and in lighter moments.

The story itself is somewhat uneven, but Pickford keeps it going at all times. This one is probably of interest only to those who enjoy Pickford or silent movies in general, but for those who are already fans, it has more than enough to be worth seeing.

Mary Pickford once again plays a teen - and, for a while, a pre-teen - girl in this dull mix of comedy and melodrama. When the film starts, her character is only four years old, but thankfully even Pickford realised she wasn't going to pull that one off and so a real child was used. In one of his early credited roles, a ridiculously young Adolphe Menjou plays a lounge-room cad attempting to swindle Pickford's estranged stepfather out of his moolah. It's watchable, but nothing special.

This is one of Mary Pickford's least remembered films and that's a shame because it's one of her best. She stars as Jeanne, a poor little rich girl fairly ignored by her mother who abandons her with a housekeeper while she goes off to marry her next husband. Then years later, the mother decides to reclaim her daughter but the housekeeper now of course loves the child as her own and says the girl is dead. Another five years pass and Jeanne, now a teenager, through circumstance ends up working as a maid for her real mother! There are many tender scenes in this movie but lots of comedy too and Mary's washing the floor with scrub brushes tied to her feet and skating is one of her classic screen moments. The whole cast is fine and darling little Jeanne Carpenter as the very young Jeanne will surely charm you and break your heart as the abandoned child. Much as I love Mary, I would have loved to have seen more of the film with Jeanne in it.

1921 was last time Pickford made three movies in one year, reflecting the meticulous care she took in producing her brand of films. Her earlier May 1921 "Through The Back Door" has Pickford's brother Jack listed as co-director. Jack had just experienced the tragic accidental death of his wife, Olive Thomas, and became greatly depressed. To lift his spirits, Mary felt if he were busy in assisting directing "Through The Back Door," he would get out of his funk. But by all accounts people involved say he did next to nothing to deserve credit as a co-director to Alfred Green. Jack was also listed as co-director in "Little Lord Fauntleroy," also with Green, but it was another two years before he resumed his acting career in a self-produced film, 1923's 'Garrison's Finish."

Pickford's strong forte as a producer was always selecting stories that were sentimental yet tailor-made to her on-screen personality. Sometimes it didn't hurt the plot consisted of a younger version of the adult protagonist, which is exactly what happens in "Through The Back Door." The narrative has the actress as a 10-year-old daughter to a Belgian widowed mother, whose new marriage to a rich man, a child-hater, has Pickford left with a maid while the couple relocate to America. Several years later, during World War One, the now-adult Pickford immigrates to America. Not letting on whom she is, Mary becomes a house maid to her mother. Things get interesting when she gets wind of an embezzlement plan to fleece her mother and hubby.

So the story of this film is preposterous at best, even for it's time. A girl meets a rich guy who talks her into leaving her baby in another country for like a decade or so, then decides she wants her back but the woman she left her with pretends she's dead, then she goes to America and for some reason doesn't tell her mom but instead goes to work for her, entangling her in some scam against playboy step-dad and oh-yeah, she meets a totally not-so-charming man who she falls for because he helps her up when falls face first in the mud. and she's got a duck and two orphan children as pets. did i miss anything? I really can'tsay anything for the story of this movie, but when she's aloud run amok, Pickford is as as great as ever, I just Barely recommend this movie for those moments. everyone knows the famous scrub brush-skating scenes. but i'll list a few more for good measure.

1. the sequence in which she impresses an old man by fishing a massive sturgeon from a puddle, turns out it was her family's dinner for the evening and when the maid finds it missing she nearly kills the cat.

2. She cleans her dirty feet off by laying on her back on a table and rubbing them on a towel on the wall as if she was walking up the wall.

3. Mary's character is elated at having smuggled a duck into the US raising it triumphantly over her head and marching away like victorious general.

4. Falling in the mud she tries to clean herself off and only winds up leaving two suggestive hand prints over her breasts. When a cute rich boy arrives to see if she's all right, in embarrassment she tries to cover it up by grabbing herself suggestively, actually doing with hands what the mud hand prints suggested. (probably really racy for the day.) 5. the suitor asks of the Bellina orphans she's picked up along a road after their mother died: "Are the children really yours?" she says "Yes. I found them." she says. To which he makes a face to suggest. "oh, good enough for me." so yeah, I wrote a lot about a movie I'm not that into, but those moments and a few others make the film worthwhile. Mary Pickford is a giant supernova of charm and a fantastic performer, she outshines her directors unfortunately.