Originally posted to Facebook on 9/9/2016
A Romance of the Redwoods was our first film from 1917. As I mentioned last week, it’s the first one we’ve seen starring Mary Pickford, and the second one, after Carmen, that we’ve seen directed by Cecil B. DeMille. In another prominent role is Charles Ogle, who played Frankenstein’s monster in the sixteen minute 1910 version we saw earlier this year. This film is ostensibly a melodrama, but it has a strangely light tone not completely in sync with its plot. The initial contrivance that sets the film in motion is that Mary Pickford’s character, living in Boston, is orphaned, and decides to follow her uncle out to California. However, in the meantime her uncle has been killed by a group of Native Americans (or “Injuns” as one character calls them in a title card), and his identity assumed by a stagecoach robber played by Elliot Dexter. Since this movie is titled “A Romance of the Redwoods,” you can probably guess where this setup leads -- though the leads don’t have a particularly strong chemistry, and the romance is more announced than truly shown. But the plot has enough twists and turns along the way to keep it interesting, if not essential.
Next week we’ll watch our second film from 1917, Tillie Wakes Up, a sequel to Tillie’s Punctured Romance from 1914, minus Chaplin and Mabel Normand. Marie Dressler is still in it though, playing the title role. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
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