Sparrows, Mary Pickford's 1926 release, superbly combines the two elements--sentiment and adventure--that characterized Pickford's best work. At first glance, the film seems to be a horror picture, as satanic potato farmer Grimes (Gustav Von Seyfertitz) crushes a child's doll with his thumb and forefinger and tosses the plaything into the dismal swamps surrounding his lands. We learn that Grimes has been exploiting the children from a local orphanage, forcing them to work his farm day and night. Though collecting a hefty maintenance pay for the orphans, Grimes dresses them in rags and feeds them a starvation diet. Happily, Mary Pickford, the oldest of the orphans, has enough gumption to stand up to Grimes and prohibit him from inflicting any further atrocities. The plot thickens when a kidnaped child is left in Grimes' care in exchange for a generous portion of the ransom money. Mary rescues the abducted child, as well as all the other orphans, by leading them through the alligator-infested and quicksand-festooned swamp--a truly frightening sequence, made even more so by the use of real gators. Sparrows falters only in those scenes where Pickford, with genuine but somewhat misguided piety, "converses" with the Almighty, and in the final motorboat-chase sequence, which seems prolonged (and unnecessary!) after that heart-pounding swamp escape. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
liked it.
Mary Pickford was the queen of the American silent screen, and one of her later classics is Sparrows. Once again, Pickford plays half her age, this time as a teenaged orphan living in a hellish swamp, the prisoner of a vicious farmer. Surprisingly brutal for its time, especially in its depiction of cruelty to children, the impact of Sparrrows is made all the more effective by the beautifully dark and grim photography (by three masters of the camera). No attempt is made to produce picturesque scenes; instead, the director and cinematographers wisely opt for an almost horror-film effect, a depiction of the deadly swamp that one would more expect to see in a 1930s monster movie rather than a 1920s
Mary Pickford melodrama. Equally important to the film's success are the incredible sets by Harry Oliver. Filled with quicksand and nasty alligators, the swamp and farm look terrifying, and especially dramatic is the sequence where Pickford leads the children on a great escape through the swamp past the alligators (according to one interview with Pickford, this was no special effect and was quite a dangerous scene to shoot). Pickford, in a wonderfully over-the-top performance, displays why she is an icon of the era;
Gustav von Seyffertitz makes for a very hissable villain; and the children look believably like scruffier versions of the Little Rascals. ~ Bob Mastrangelo, All Movie Guide