Canadian-born Mary Pickford played the title role in this war melodrama under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille. They worked together on only two projects, and although Miss Pickford spoke of DeMille with respect in later years, she did not recall their collaboration or the resulting films with much fondness. I don't know why Mary didn't like working with DeMille, but I would hazard a guess it was because they were both larger-than-life personalities with egos to match, and very specific ideas about how to make movies. Certainly the films they made together feature the top production values we expect from them both, based on the career standards each would maintain, including first-rate cinematography and art design, Hollywood's best character actors in colorful supporting roles, etc.
I don't know why Mary didn't like this particular film, either, but I can hazard a second guess. The Little American was made just after the U.S. entered the Great War, during the first flush of near-hysterical nationalist fervor that swept the nation, and it reflects that mood in ways that don't wear well in retrospect. This movie was designed to be propaganda of the red meat variety, meant to whip up feelings of righteous outrage. Here there is no room for political background, perspective, or dispassionate consideration of other points of view; in short, no room for reason. The Germans are merciless brutes, period. All they understand is force, period. Perhaps, with the passage of time, Miss Pickford wasn't comfortable with this absolutism, or with the super-charged passion of the storytelling on display here. Today we can look back at this film and its siblings (such as D. W. Griffith's Hearts of the World) with historical curiosity and the distance afforded by hindsight, but, despite the passage of some ninety years, many viewers will find these movies painful to watch today, not only because of the ugly experiences depicted or the ugly feelings they stir, but because of our awareness of the very real impact this sort of propaganda had on contemporary viewers. Audiences of 1917 cheered for Mary and the Allied troops, gasped at German atrocities, and cursed those dirty Huns. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that some young men who saw this film may have found in it the inspiration to enlist, and who knows what happened to them after that. It's no wonder the star had little affection for this project.
The film tells the story of a young American woman named Angela Moore -- born on the Fourth of July, no less -- who is courted by a Frenchman and a German, although she is decidedly more fond of her German suitor, Karl. When war breaks out her suitors, naturally, wind up on opposite sides of the conflict. Meanwhile Angela attempts to sail to France at the invitation of her invalid aunt, but her ship (here called the "Veritania") is torpedoed by a German submarine and she narrowly escapes with her life. This harrowing sequence was obviously based on the destruction of the Lusitania less than two years earlier, and surely must have hit a raw nerve in many viewers when the film was first released. The German sub commander and his crew, surfacing to observe their handiwork, flash searchlights on the sinking ship and look on coldly as Angela and her fellow passengers tumble off the tilted deck and plummet into the water, making no effort to assist.
Angela reaches shore and finds her way to her aunt's château, but discovers that the old lady has died and that the house and its grounds are at the center of a pitched battle for territory between the French and the Germans. Perhaps it goes without saying that she encounters both of her former suitors under very different circumstances and is torn between them, although her political sympathies are fully with the Allied cause. Angela allows the French to turn her house into a makeshift hospital. Despite the danger she remains on the scene when the château is overrun and commandeered by the Germans. They regard her as little more than a galley servant, and in one painful scene she is compelled to kneel before a German general and pull off his muddy boots. (But Angela gets off easy next to the household staff of chambermaids, who are gang raped; an event that mercifully occurs off-camera.) Angela is nothing if not determined, however, and she risks her life to send surreptitious messages to the French. For awhile it appears that her onetime lover Karl has turned into a beast no better than his comrades, drunkenly attacking Angela in a darkened room before he recognizes her. Ultimately, however, at Angela's behest, he denounces the Kaiser's cause, defies his commanding officers, and throws in his lot with the Allies. After more suspenseful adventures the duo escape together, and when Karl is captured by French troops, Angela is able to get him a reprieve.
Not so surprisingly, the film's original ending upset contemporary audiences. After such graphic demonstrations of German depravity it didn't seem right that Mary would wind up with a German lover, even a "reformed" one. An alternate ending was filmed in which she winds up with the Frenchman instead, but it appears that this footage has not survived.
The Little American is a fascinating record of a grim chapter in world history, but it's a difficult viewing experience. I'm a silent film buff and historically-minded, and yet I felt queasy and depressed by the time it was over. I couldn't help but recall that this sort of incendiary propaganda was so prevalent during the Great War that it caused Americans to be skeptical twenty years later when stories of Nazi atrocities began to reach these shores. DeMille, Pickford, Griffith, and their Hollywood colleagues harnessed the cinema in the service of militant nationalism, and the techniques they pioneered have been refined into ever-more sophisticated forms ever since. Not a happy thought, is it?
I don't know why Mary didn't like this particular film, either, but I can hazard a second guess. The Little American was made just after the U.S. entered the Great War, during the first flush of near-hysterical nationalist fervor that swept the nation, and it reflects that mood in ways that don't wear well in retrospect. This movie was designed to be propaganda of the red meat variety, meant to whip up feelings of righteous outrage. Here there is no room for political background, perspective, or dispassionate consideration of other points of view; in short, no room for reason. The Germans are merciless brutes, period. All they understand is force, period. Perhaps, with the passage of time, Miss Pickford wasn't comfortable with this absolutism, or with the super-charged passion of the storytelling on display here. Today we can look back at this film and its siblings (such as D. W. Griffith's Hearts of the World) with historical curiosity and the distance afforded by hindsight, but, despite the passage of some ninety years, many viewers will find these movies painful to watch today, not only because of the ugly experiences depicted or the ugly feelings they stir, but because of our awareness of the very real impact this sort of propaganda had on contemporary viewers. Audiences of 1917 cheered for Mary and the Allied troops, gasped at German atrocities, and cursed those dirty Huns. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that some young men who saw this film may have found in it the inspiration to enlist, and who knows what happened to them after that. It's no wonder the star had little affection for this project.
The film tells the story of a young American woman named Angela Moore -- born on the Fourth of July, no less -- who is courted by a Frenchman and a German, although she is decidedly more fond of her German suitor, Karl. When war breaks out her suitors, naturally, wind up on opposite sides of the conflict. Meanwhile Angela attempts to sail to France at the invitation of her invalid aunt, but her ship (here called the "Veritania") is torpedoed by a German submarine and she narrowly escapes with her life. This harrowing sequence was obviously based on the destruction of the Lusitania less than two years earlier, and surely must have hit a raw nerve in many viewers when the film was first released. The German sub commander and his crew, surfacing to observe their handiwork, flash searchlights on the sinking ship and look on coldly as Angela and her fellow passengers tumble off the tilted deck and plummet into the water, making no effort to assist.
Angela reaches shore and finds her way to her aunt's château, but discovers that the old lady has died and that the house and its grounds are at the center of a pitched battle for territory between the French and the Germans. Perhaps it goes without saying that she encounters both of her former suitors under very different circumstances and is torn between them, although her political sympathies are fully with the Allied cause. Angela allows the French to turn her house into a makeshift hospital. Despite the danger she remains on the scene when the château is overrun and commandeered by the Germans. They regard her as little more than a galley servant, and in one painful scene she is compelled to kneel before a German general and pull off his muddy boots. (But Angela gets off easy next to the household staff of chambermaids, who are gang raped; an event that mercifully occurs off-camera.) Angela is nothing if not determined, however, and she risks her life to send surreptitious messages to the French. For awhile it appears that her onetime lover Karl has turned into a beast no better than his comrades, drunkenly attacking Angela in a darkened room before he recognizes her. Ultimately, however, at Angela's behest, he denounces the Kaiser's cause, defies his commanding officers, and throws in his lot with the Allies. After more suspenseful adventures the duo escape together, and when Karl is captured by French troops, Angela is able to get him a reprieve.
Not so surprisingly, the film's original ending upset contemporary audiences. After such graphic demonstrations of German depravity it didn't seem right that Mary would wind up with a German lover, even a "reformed" one. An alternate ending was filmed in which she winds up with the Frenchman instead, but it appears that this footage has not survived.
The Little American is a fascinating record of a grim chapter in world history, but it's a difficult viewing experience. I'm a silent film buff and historically-minded, and yet I felt queasy and depressed by the time it was over. I couldn't help but recall that this sort of incendiary propaganda was so prevalent during the Great War that it caused Americans to be skeptical twenty years later when stories of Nazi atrocities began to reach these shores. DeMille, Pickford, Griffith, and their Hollywood colleagues harnessed the cinema in the service of militant nationalism, and the techniques they pioneered have been refined into ever-more sophisticated forms ever since. Not a happy thought, is it?
