On 2007-10-14 Matthew G. Sherwin, last seen screaming at Amazon customer service wrote: 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!. And summed up by saying fine Mary Pickford vehicle. Currently Sparrows has an overall rating of 10 over 10.
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Image Entertainment claimed Mary Pickford´s silent masterpiece is an AFI official selection for ´100 Years, 100 Stars.´ Hidden deep in the Southern swamps, the Grimes family operates a ´baby farm´ where unwanted or ´lost´ children are cruelly worked and underfed. Mollie (Pickford) leads them through a harrowing escape. Also includes 2 early Mary Pickford shorts directed by D.W. Griffith: ´The Mender of Nets´ (1912, 16 min.) and ´Wilful Peggy´ (1910, 17 min.).
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