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| Mary Pickford does precocious better than anyone |
Starring Mary Pickford, Milla Davenport, Percy Haswell, Fay Lemport
Produced by Mary Pickford Company
Jerusha "Judy" Abbott (Pickford) is a young orphan girl who gets her name from a phone book and a gravestone. At the age of 12, she finds herself the leader and guardian of the hard-scrabble youth of the John Grier home. And protection is something they constantly need. The matriarch of the orphanage is an overbearing dictator who burns children's fingers on the stove for misbehaving.
Judy attempts to organize a strike against the hated prune, accidentally finds herself drunk, steals a doll to provide a literal moment of happiness to a dying child and defends the children from the dictatorial trustees. One of the trustees takes a liking to the precocious Judy and convinces a new trustee to sponsor her for college. The trustee wishes to remain unknown to Judy. She only catches a glimpse of his elongated shadow and nicknames him Daddy-Long-Legs.
Once at school, Judy sets out to write the great American novel so she can pay back her anonymous benefactor. She also finds herself in the middle of a love triangle between the young Jimmie McBride (Neilan) and the older Jarvis Pendleton (Mahlon Hamilton). Will she find love with either of the men? And who is John Smith, her mysterious sponsor.
The good news first: Mary Pickford is predictably solid as Judy. She is humorous and sympathetic, sometimes in the same moment. She shines during the orphanage scenes, where she is initiating a lot of mayhem with a mischievous smile and a gleam in her eye.
The other stand out performance is Davenport as the head of the orphanage. It's a one dimensional part, but she takes it and runs with it. There's a moment where Judy thinks she's gotten away but the headmistress knows right where she is. Davenport gives this evil smile, anticipating capturing her tormentor. Well done.
That said, this movie is a tonal and structural mess. Judy is 12 years old and an orphan. Then she's in college with a grey-haired man pining for her. She an uneducated orphan who can't pronounce half of the words she uses. Then she's a published author. It's possible some time went by, but there is no hint of that in the movie.
The movie also downshifts without a clutch between humor and tragedy. After Judy cleverly steals the doll and brings into her dying friend, the next scene is the child actually dying. There's no transition between these moments. They just happen.
Daddy Long Legs spends a lot of time establishing that Judy is the only reason these orphans have any joy in their lives. Then she heads to college... and completely forgets about them. Oh, that is until she writes a book about her orphanage experience. It seems odd that the girl wouldn't use her position at the end of the film to help the other orphans.
The other recurring theme in Pickford movies is present here: creepy old men love Mary Pickford. Pendleton looks like he's in his 50s. Judy is at most in her teens. When he professes his love for her, she points out he's more suited to be her grandmother. The film even knows this is weird. So why does it keep pushing the romance?
There are a lot of plot threads that pop up randomly and are dropped. Jimmie is accused of running someone over with his car and taken off at gunpoint. Never referenced again. A girl falls down a well. Did she ever get out? Pendleton breaks a tail light on his car. No reason for that to have been in the script either. And what is with the random appearance of the honest-to-goodness Cupid? It's an out of place moment of fantasy.
Finally, Neilan has no sense of pacing in this movie. There's a scene where Judy and another orphan are drunk. There are amusing moments, but it goes on WAY too long. There's a moment in the scene where a dog ends up drunk as well. We spend over a minute of screen time just watching the dog stumble around. It was funny... for the first ten seconds.
This is not a bad film, but it's not a great one either. It's another solid performance by Pickford in an okay story, but terribly put together.
** out of *****
Watched on DVD through Netflix
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