Tue 26 May 2015
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: HEART O’ THE HILLS (1919).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews , Silent films[3] Comments
HEART O’ THE HILLS. Pickford/First National, 1919. Mary Pickford, Jack Gilbert, Harold Goodwin. Director: Sidney A. Franklin. Shown at Cinefest 18, Liverpool NY, March 1998.
This is based on a novel by John Fox, Jr. and like his The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (filmed several times, including Paramount, 1936), has a heroine who leaves the hills where she has grown up to live in town, where she goes to school and picks up city ways.
This is not, however, as dark as Trail (our Mary is much perkier and more resilient than Sylvia Sidney in the sound film), and she eventually rejects the son of the rich man who has taken her into his family (a young John Gilbert) and goes back to the hills to marry her childhood sweetheart.
Beautiful location filming by Charles Rosher. A friend and I parted ways on this, but I’m a sucker for back-country folk standing up to city slickers, and this pulled me in without any trouble. I think it has something to do with the summers I spent on my grandparents’ farm in rural Arkansas, and rural Arkansas was about as primitive as the area depicted in this slice of Americana.
Mary plays herself at 13 (a real stretch) and 20ish (more believable), and she rides well and appears to handle a rifle like a young frontier sharpshooter.
May 27th, 2015 at 3:12 pm
The back woods film I can’t tolerate is SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS (also Fox) with John Wayne, despite the presence of Harry Carry as the long missing father the Duke has sworn a blood oath to kill and a rare non bad guy role from Marc Lawrence.
East Texas wasn’t quite as back country as the Ozarks, but I spent enough time there to lose my taste for rural dramas.
And on the subject, what is Gilbert dressed as? He looks like Zorro or a matador?
May 27th, 2015 at 3:55 pm
I guess Mary Pickford’s fans just loved seeing her dressed up as a kid.
May 27th, 2015 at 6:36 pm
They did not like it when she grew up and tried to do drama in talkies. Doug didn’t fare much better, though he didn’t withdraw behind the walls of Pickfair to never age like Dorian Gray combined with Citizen Kane.