Although it wasn't planned that way at the time, Secrets (1933) turned out to be Mary Pickford's last film. An odd choice for her, since the male role is the main one. Although not a total write-off, the film's more than a bit disappointing. Most movies adapted from stage plays do their best to disguise that fact. This one doesn't! The action falls into three very distinct Acts. The first is played mainly for comedy with Leslie Howard (of all people) enacting a clownish young man on an idiotic penny farthing bicycle - and playing it most unconvincingly. I suspect that Marshal Neilan directed most of this rubbish before producer Pickford woke up to his incompetence and fired him. His replacement, Frank Borzage handled the night garden scene with pictorial finesse, but didn't do much with the rest of the movie, although the Second Act turned out as actually the most interesting of the three. It's a western, would you believe, with Leslie Howard as a gunslinger? He's more convincing than you might expect, but we have to wait for Act Three before we encounter really charismatic acting - and it doesn't come from either the stars or the main support players, but from Mona Maris who plays her one scene with presence and style.
The aim of the stage play was obviously to show the main male character through three stages of his life - young, unsure romantic, then reluctant hero, and finally discredited heel. This sort of stagey device can work well in a theater where the Acts are conspicuously separated by long Intervals while the stage-hands change the set. In a movie, where the Acts are divided by no more than an insert title, the device seems both jarring and artificial - here especially as neither Howard nor Pickford can muster enough gusto to bring it off. No wonder Pickford never returned to the screen! You might have the main role, but even an incompetent male lead - or a really jazzy also-in-the-cast whom the director, the photographer and the dress designer wish to indulge - can muscle you right off the screen and put you in the shadows!
The aim of the stage play was obviously to show the main male character through three stages of his life - young, unsure romantic, then reluctant hero, and finally discredited heel. This sort of stagey device can work well in a theater where the Acts are conspicuously separated by long Intervals while the stage-hands change the set. In a movie, where the Acts are divided by no more than an insert title, the device seems both jarring and artificial - here especially as neither Howard nor Pickford can muster enough gusto to bring it off. No wonder Pickford never returned to the screen! You might have the main role, but even an incompetent male lead - or a really jazzy also-in-the-cast whom the director, the photographer and the dress designer wish to indulge - can muscle you right off the screen and put you in the shadows!