Sparrows (Silent)

Sparrows (Silent)
Mary Pickford produced and stars in this absorbing melodrama, as Mama Molly, tomboy guardian to a tribe of abused orphans on a "baby farm" in a Gothic southern swamp. "The Devil's share in the world's creation," the swamp is a truly frightening place, with bottomless bog holes that suck up anything thrown into them in a matter of moments. The baby farm's proprietor, Grimes (Gustave von Seyffertitz), is the embodiment of evil, so mean he makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus. He's fond of tossing naughty babies into the sucking ooze (a perversity we hear about but never actually see). The little children are forced into slave labor by Grimes and his harridan wife (the scary Charlotte Mineau). Molly tries to keep the poor kids alive and well, but it's a losing battle.

The plot thickens when some kidnappers stash a wealthy toddler at the farm. Molly falls instantly in love with this roly-poly curly-top and protects her with her life. (A deliberate contrast is made between the well-fed moppet and the grubby, scrawny inhabitants of the baby farm.) When the police come nosing around looking for the kidnapped child, Grimes plans to throw her into the muck. Molly takes off with her and all the kids on a perilous flight across the swamp, narrowly escaping bog holes, pursuing dogs, and gaping-mawed alligators. It's a real nail biter. As always, the proceedings are leavened from beginning to end by Pickford's marvelous sense of humor. There are flashes of comic relief--even as Molly and the kids hang from a branch above the snapping gators--that put this film a cut above run-of-the-mill melodrama. --Laura Mirsky
Customer Review: fine Mary Pickford vehicle
Sparrows is a great Mary Pickford vehicle that keeps your attention throughout. The superb acting, the very well constructed sets, and the excellent cinematography all combine to create this motion picture masterpiece. The action begins on a "baby farm" run by the evil Mr. Grimes (Gustave von Seyffertitz) and his wife Mrs. Grimes (Charlotte Mineau). The Grimes use very young children to labor in their rundown fields planting and harvesting vegetables. The eldest child, Molly (Mary Pickford) works hard and also looks out for the rest of the children who seem several years younger than she. Mr. Grimes has no heart--he sends them to bed without supper after they spend all day toiling in his fields; and he rings a bell whenever visitors come so that the kids of the baby farm know to hide. Grimes doesn't want it known that it is he running the baby farm. Eventually, there is a new addition to the baby farm. Mr. Grimes gets the very young little girl of a wealthy family; her name is Doris Wayne (Mary Louise Miller). When Doris's father (Roy Stewart) finds out she's been kidnapped, he contacts the police and they quickly organize a manhunt for the men who kidnapped little Doris and took her to Grimes's baby farm. Meanwhile, Grimes want to bury the evidence--literally. He decides to throw little baby Doris in the quicksand of the nearby swamp so that the police can never find her and so that he will never be charged with any crime. When Molly hears of this she quickly concocts a plan for her and the smaller children to escape through the swamp, across a small creek filled with live alligators and eventually to safety and better homes. Of course the plot can go anywhere from here. As Mr. Grimes knows, escape is nearly impossible through the quicksand of the swamp. How will Molly guide the children through that? How will they avoid the alligators of the swamp? Will they be successful at escaping the baby farm? What will happen to Mr. and Mrs. Grimes if they do escape from the farm? Watch and find out! The choreography works well in scenes on the farm. Molly and the son of Mr. Grimes, Ambrose (Spec O'Donnell) fight it out once or twice and the choreography really enhances these scenes. The cinematography impresses me: They made it seem that Molly and the children really were very, very close to the live alligators. However, as one reviewer correctly notes, the alligators were filmed separately and the film was patched together to create the illusion that the alligators were very close. The DVD comes with two extras; both are shorts from 1910 when D. W. Griffith directed Mary Pickford in a number of films. On this DVD we get Wilful Peggy and The Mender of Nets. These two films let us see a rather young Mary Pickford already acting every bit of the pro that she always was. Great! The prints are in excellent condition for their age, too. Amazon notes above that there is a documentary with Whoopi Goldberg; but there was no such extra on the disc that I received. Overall, Sparrows is an excellent film starring the immortal Mary Pickford; her acting impresses me every step of the way. Look for a fine, convincing performance by Gustave von Seyffertitz as the evil Mr. Grimes; and Spec O'Donnell does a great job playing the son of Mr. and Mrs. Grimes as well. Enjoy!
Customer Review: A Nice Gift From the Past for Lemony Snickett Fans
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 playing a teenager and even though in her thirties she probably 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 but it deals with 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 that 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.