Mary Pickford: Sparrows (1926) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of the Mary Pickford Company

Silent movie starlet Gladys Marie Smith aka Mary Pickford was the most powerful woman in Hollywood in the 1920s and at the peak of her creative powers under the United Artists film banner formed by herself, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks near the end of her silent film tenure produced and delivered what many cineastes refer to as her greatest film: the 1926 swampy, marshy child farm orphanage drama/thriller Sparrows.  

Previously only available in faded prints before the recently formed Mary Pickford Company and the Library of Congress collaborated to rebuild a 35mm print comprised of nitrate and safety dupe elements before being scanned in 4K and aided by an orchestral commissioned score by Cameron and Taylor Graves, this taut little Dickensian gem now has the chance to be seen by modern moviegoers as close to its original gothic splendor as when it first appeared in theaters.
 
The second and final collaboration with director William Beaudine from 1925’s Little Annie Rooney which sadly ended with Beaudine storming off the set leaving an uncredited Tom McNamara to finish the picture, the classic melodrama was instrumental in bringing about an end to the baby farm epidemic involving unwanted or orphaned children being trafficked illegally for slave labor or to be sold to adoptive parents.  Considered an unglamourous but brave performance from the titular heroine played by Mary Pickford, the film told another time-honored tale of a poor uneducated woman with a heart of gold standing up in the face of oppression. 

 
With an evil domineering whip cracker named Mr. Grimes (a devilish Gustav von Seyffertitz) keeping the child labor operation in line at the risk of starving the minors to death, the ever-defiant Molly (Mary Pickford) who tends to the children decides she’s had enough and mounts an escape plan.  Meanwhile two co-conspirators kidnap and ransom a baby girl from a rich family, bring down the unwanted eyes and ire of the law and as Molly finds out they intend to kill the baby to cover their tracks, the film turns into a nerve-wracking chase thriller with Molly and the children in tow trying to navigate a quicksand laden swamp replete with hungry alligators.
 
Boasting brilliant production design by Harry Oliver who turns the swampy wetlands into an open outdoors gothic Old Dark House lensed beautifully by not one but three of the best cinematographers working at the time Charles Rosher, Karl Struss and Hal Mohr, Sparrows is a visually stunning if not arrestingly earthy thriller with a dedicated cast of kids willing to wade through wet set pieces during some of the film’s more climactic thrills.  

It goes without saying Mary Pickford is a screen presence in this film who radiates almost luminously not wholly unlike Brigitte Helm’s saintly Maria from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, including but not limited to a touching sequence in which a malnourished baby she’s tending to passes during her sleep and we see a visual effect of Jesus coming from Heaven to claim the child.  Though Pickford herself clashed with her director, she’s an angelic presence shining brightly in an otherwise dimly lit hellscape. 
 
Released theatrically in 1926, the $463,000 thriller became a huge box office success is generally regarded as Mary Pickford’s finest hour and with this newly 4K restored blu-ray edition released by MVD Visual and VCI Entertainment in conjunction with the Mary Pickford Company, Sparrows now has a chance to timelessly thrill modern moviegoers all over again.  

With still startling visual effects sequences and striking set pieces, an archetypical supervillain played with gusto by Gustav von Seyffertitz and the wholesomeness of Mary Pickford’s otherwise physically demanding performance, Sparrows is a bona fide silent movie masterpiece that has never looked more beautiful and points to Pickford as one of the silent era’s toughest heroines to grace the silver screen.

--Andrew Kotwicki