Stella Maris (1918)

Why it's included:
We've been heavy into the comedy lately. Of course it makes sense to do short comedy when introducing kids to silent pictures, as it tends to be far more palatable, but it was time for drama and Stella Maris is here to give us a taste of the dramatic (melodramatic?). It features a powerful performance in a dual role from Mary Pickford.

Specs:
About an hour and a half long, black and white, silent. We were lucky that our local library had a copy on dvd, but it seems to be available on youtube as well. (By the way, when you have a choice, it makes all the difference in the world to view these old movies on dvd rather than a crummy low-def youtube video).

Our family's average rating (on a scale of 1-10):
6.75

More about the film and our reaction to it:
Mary Pickford plays Stella Maris, a beautiful young invalid being raised in luxury by overprotective guardians. Pickford also plays Unity Blake, also an orphan, but plain, plucky and worldly. This is the story of their challenges in life, including how their paths eventually cross and they fall in love with the same man. The story is riveting, sad, powerful and ultimately reaffirming.

I was surprised by how well my kids took to this movie considering the serious material and heavy dark tone, but they loved it. Mary Pickford is compelling in both roles. You can really appreciate that actual talent must have played a huge role in her stardom. She is so good at  inhabiting each character completely, that you can hardly tell it is the same actress playing the parts. Had there been Academy Awards back then, she would have been a shoo-in. The film is also blessed with excellent direction and artistic filming, including the well-done shots where the two Pickford characters appear together! We love thinking about what special effects were possible back then and how they were done.

Beware of a large amount of shocking material here - including murder, a brutal beating (just off-camera) but still intense, cruelty toward Unity by the person who adopts her, substance abuse and jailing. This movie would not have been made 15 years later once the production Code set in. (I think, maybe, the fact that the movie was so shocking is part of what made my kids love it). Although the film was intense, it was not gratuitous; it was a tight meaningful story.

Iconic shot:

The Lonely Villa (1909)

Why it's included:
You may have noticed a large gap in years between our last film, The Great Train Robbery (1903) and this one. There's a reason. Although a key point in our project was to watch cinema through time, slowly noticing how things changed around us, it is also important to win your family's trust by not unduly trying their patience with the earliest, choppiest, least developed silents. You don't want to poison them against the amazing silents that are coming up in the 1920s! In any case, for my family it was time to advance a few years. 

This film was chosen to see Mary Pickford -- perhaps the most famous and beloved of all silent actors -- in an early role (credited only as 'one of the children') and because it was directed by D.W. Griffith who is the most acclaimed director of this very early era.

Specs:
Short - just 8 minutes; black and white, silent and easily available online in the public domain.

Our family's average rating (on a scale of 1-10):

5.5

More about the film and our response to it:

Like The Great Train Robbery, this one is tense and involves pretty scary bad guys. A family is barricaded inside their home when robbers start to menace them after dad has left the house for the day. Luckily, phones had been invented at this time! (yay) and the family is able to call up dad and tell him to get his sorry self home. Which he does, before any serious mayhem can ensue.

This is a good film. It is entertaining and even rather tense, but don't expect it to blow you or your kids away. On the other hand, its only 8 minutes long! A pretty small investment of energy.  How much your family enjoys films like this will depend heavily on how much they're willing to throw themselves in to the experience. We noticed that, already, the "art" of film-making had advanced considerably since 1902, with stiller cameras, better sets, and more coherent acting and plot-lines. Even so, the house set is very basic, just a couple of walls thrown together. Location shots are better and really quite pretty.

As with other old films, it is compelling to note the technology and conveniences that people lived with. Its fun to notice whether the people -had phones? were driving cars? riding horses? Or to  notice what their clothes and hairstyles looked like. We look for things like sidewalks, radios, stores, iceboxes, anything that helps place the film in its period context is fun. One way to keep interest strong in this unfamiliar territory is to think of the film as a living time capsule. The power of seeing a movie that is so old is, for some odd reason, heady. This seems especially true when you see young children in a movie from 1909 and imagine that everyone on screen is almost certainly dead now.

Iconic shot: