Ok, I learnt western comedies did not see the light of day with 'Destry Rides Again' (1939) but are a far older genre. That's good to know, and it is among the best things I can say about Mary Pickford's 'M'Liss'. Admittedly, the film does have some other good sides. Pickford's acting is as lively as ever, and the scene where M'Liss (the teenage tomboy Pickford plays) 'robs' the stage armed with nothing but a slingshot is actually funny. However, M'Liss seems to terrorise the whole town ('Red Gulch') with that slingshot, and that's neither credible nor amusing. The direction is clunky and relies far too much on the many title cards to characterise the persons who appear in the story. Regarding the pacing, calling it 'uneven' would be charitable. In fact, in about the first half of the film nothing particularly important is happening. Something resembling a plot begins to take shape only from then on. This 'plot', for want of a better word, is actually pretty weird and too convoluted to summarise in what I want to be a brief review. The upshot is that M'Liss falls for her school teacher, who is suspected of murder and in danger of being lynched (he is saved not by her but more or less accidentally by a minor figure). That she and the teacher end up as a couple - notwithstanding her being a minor and a dependant - is one of the weird things about the film. That the actual murderer is a Mexican characterised in an extremely stereotypical way is one of its unpleasant aspects; another one is the fact that the sheriff condones lynching. In sum: apart from the much younger 'Secrets' this is all in all the worst Pickford film I have watched so far.
Review of M'Liss
