This film won Mary Pickford the second Oscar for Best Actress ever awarded, and was one of the more controversial decisions ever made by the Academy for that particular award. When Pickford made this film, she was already 36 but was playing a girl who was approximately 20. However, her tiny size and petite features prevented her from looking ridiculous. Pickford plays Norma Besant, daughter of Dr. John Besant, a southern belle of the flapper era known as a "coquette" - in modern terms, a flirt. Her lack of affection for her numerous suitors does not prevent her from accepting their gifts and leading them on, but her heart truly only belongs to Michael Jeffery, a "man from the hills". This is a polite term for what southern rural society in those days would call white trash. The two want to get married, but Dr. Besant, being a noble southern doctor of that era, holds dear several nonnegotiable rules of behavior - defending one's honor seems to require lots of gun play, never allow blacks in the house unless they're serving you dinner or cleaning your house, and poor white people - such as Norma's suitor - should be neither seen nor heard. Thus when the young man performs the bold act of coming to his house to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage and mentions that they have been alone together the night before - though they were only talking about their future plans - Norma's father follows after Mike and shoots him down in cold blood.
What follows is Pickford's best scene. When she hears Mike has been mortally wounded by her father, she rushes to his bedside just in time to see him die. In shock, she keeps trying to tend to him, at first refusing to believe he is dead. Her brother, one of her suitors, and an old family friend convince her Mike is gone. Now, they say, she must concentrate on saving her father from the gallows. They tell her she must lie and say Mike forced himself on her and that her father was doing the noble thing. I guess lying was considered OK in the code of the old south if the victim is "just a man from the hills". Norma understandably refuses, saying that if her father hangs it is what he deserves.
Months pass, and the trial is in progress. Norma has forgiven her father, and here, unlike Mike's deathbed, her attitude is just bizarre. She acts as though her father has done little more than take away her cell phone privileges - to put it in modern terms - rather than kill the only man she ever loved. She is now ready to go on the witness stand and lie about Mike's character - which by everyone else's account was noble and hard working - in order to free her extremely guilty father. However, it does indeed tear up Norma's conscience to say untrue things about her deceased beau, and she breaks down on the stand. At that moment, her father has a moment of clarity, goes to her, and tells her he was wrong to do what he did, and the two reconcile. He then grabs the gun that is lying as evidence on a nearby table and shoots himself, declaring that he owes his life to the state for his actions. You have to admire her dad, he is so even handed. He has no trouble taking the law into his own hands whether it is his life or someone else's life on the line.
Pickford's performance viewed today appears merely mediocre compared those of other early talkie actresses. You have to remember though, seeing America's Sweetheart talk for the first time was for the audiences of 1929 like seeing and hearing that T-Rex in Jurassic Park in 1993 - it's easy to confuse a technological milestone with a great performance, at least until the novelty wears off. What was interesting for me was to see the "code of the South" in its death throes. The attitudes of the upper class toward even the hard-working members of the poorer classes in the south were about to collapse when the Great Depression made poor people out of so many of the so-called nobility and put them all in the same crowded, uncomfortable boat.
What follows is Pickford's best scene. When she hears Mike has been mortally wounded by her father, she rushes to his bedside just in time to see him die. In shock, she keeps trying to tend to him, at first refusing to believe he is dead. Her brother, one of her suitors, and an old family friend convince her Mike is gone. Now, they say, she must concentrate on saving her father from the gallows. They tell her she must lie and say Mike forced himself on her and that her father was doing the noble thing. I guess lying was considered OK in the code of the old south if the victim is "just a man from the hills". Norma understandably refuses, saying that if her father hangs it is what he deserves.
Months pass, and the trial is in progress. Norma has forgiven her father, and here, unlike Mike's deathbed, her attitude is just bizarre. She acts as though her father has done little more than take away her cell phone privileges - to put it in modern terms - rather than kill the only man she ever loved. She is now ready to go on the witness stand and lie about Mike's character - which by everyone else's account was noble and hard working - in order to free her extremely guilty father. However, it does indeed tear up Norma's conscience to say untrue things about her deceased beau, and she breaks down on the stand. At that moment, her father has a moment of clarity, goes to her, and tells her he was wrong to do what he did, and the two reconcile. He then grabs the gun that is lying as evidence on a nearby table and shoots himself, declaring that he owes his life to the state for his actions. You have to admire her dad, he is so even handed. He has no trouble taking the law into his own hands whether it is his life or someone else's life on the line.
Pickford's performance viewed today appears merely mediocre compared those of other early talkie actresses. You have to remember though, seeing America's Sweetheart talk for the first time was for the audiences of 1929 like seeing and hearing that T-Rex in Jurassic Park in 1993 - it's easy to confuse a technological milestone with a great performance, at least until the novelty wears off. What was interesting for me was to see the "code of the South" in its death throes. The attitudes of the upper class toward even the hard-working members of the poorer classes in the south were about to collapse when the Great Depression made poor people out of so many of the so-called nobility and put them all in the same crowded, uncomfortable boat.