This is by far the best performance Mary Pickford gave in a talking film; in fact, it is one that needs no apologies from anyone for it. If she was a bit too old for the early scenes, well so was Leslie Howard (actually he and Pickford were the same age, but nobody seems to mention him in this respect), she still carried them off very well and, indeed, if you didn't already know she was 40 at the time from outside sources, you really would not know it while viewing the film.
The film suffers badly from a lack of continuity. All kinds of things appear to have happened at various stages of the story - most especially the husband's adultery - and we never know it until someone comes upon the scene and practically bellows it forth - but as others have said, this film is very much in the tradition of the old three-act play, where one act may not have very much to do with what comes before or after that act, especially when encompassing a half-century of story. Anyway, it does appear that an entire film might have been structured out of all the important story lines pretty much left out of this one. Still, old-fashioned or not, it holds the interest throughout, played first for comedy, then for drama and tragedy, and finally for pure sentiment, and both Pickford and Howard are perfect throughout the fifty years the story covers.
James Agee, a film critic many consider a great one (I do not, but will hypocritically reference him here when it suits my purposes) made one of his most memorable comments on acting when, in reviewing moments of John Wayne's trek across the parched desert holding a newborn baby in his arms, determined to save its life because of a promise he made to the baby's dying mother, a total stranger to him (THREE GODFATHERS, 1949), he said that you could read pages out of all the great acting manuals and never begin to describe what Wayne achieves in those moments, and that constitutes great screen acting. That came to mind immediately in the scene of the cattle rustlers' attack on the Howard/Pickford home in this film, one that results (without our realizing it at first) in the death of their infant baby. The scene of Mary finding the baby, thinking it is asleep, slowly realizing it is not breathing, sitting down drained of every emotion except grief, suddenly getting an idea and going over to get a face mirror to bring back, put in front of the baby's mouth in the hope that she is wrong and that it is still breathing, the ultimate realization that her child is indeed dead, her combination of both stoical and expressed grief, and then her placing her baby back in its crib and going through the door into the next room to help load ammunition for her husband's continuing fight against the rustlers, must be one of the greatest 'silent' acting moments in the history of the screen, and it should be shown in acting classes to demonstrate what silent acting, even in a talkie, could encompass. Just wonderful!
The film suffers badly from a lack of continuity. All kinds of things appear to have happened at various stages of the story - most especially the husband's adultery - and we never know it until someone comes upon the scene and practically bellows it forth - but as others have said, this film is very much in the tradition of the old three-act play, where one act may not have very much to do with what comes before or after that act, especially when encompassing a half-century of story. Anyway, it does appear that an entire film might have been structured out of all the important story lines pretty much left out of this one. Still, old-fashioned or not, it holds the interest throughout, played first for comedy, then for drama and tragedy, and finally for pure sentiment, and both Pickford and Howard are perfect throughout the fifty years the story covers.
James Agee, a film critic many consider a great one (I do not, but will hypocritically reference him here when it suits my purposes) made one of his most memorable comments on acting when, in reviewing moments of John Wayne's trek across the parched desert holding a newborn baby in his arms, determined to save its life because of a promise he made to the baby's dying mother, a total stranger to him (THREE GODFATHERS, 1949), he said that you could read pages out of all the great acting manuals and never begin to describe what Wayne achieves in those moments, and that constitutes great screen acting. That came to mind immediately in the scene of the cattle rustlers' attack on the Howard/Pickford home in this film, one that results (without our realizing it at first) in the death of their infant baby. The scene of Mary finding the baby, thinking it is asleep, slowly realizing it is not breathing, sitting down drained of every emotion except grief, suddenly getting an idea and going over to get a face mirror to bring back, put in front of the baby's mouth in the hope that she is wrong and that it is still breathing, the ultimate realization that her child is indeed dead, her combination of both stoical and expressed grief, and then her placing her baby back in its crib and going through the door into the next room to help load ammunition for her husband's continuing fight against the rustlers, must be one of the greatest 'silent' acting moments in the history of the screen, and it should be shown in acting classes to demonstrate what silent acting, even in a talkie, could encompass. Just wonderful!