CINDERELLA (1914)

Yes, a famous title, but standard product for Mary Pickford during that crucial period (post-D.W. Griffith after Anita Loos’s THE NEW YORK HAT/’12) when she briefly returned to the stage, then was coaxed back to film by Adolph Zukor at what later became Paramount for a five-year run where her salary soared from $500 to $10,000/wk.  (And no federal income tax.)  Alas, all this probably more interesting than the film which boasts a modest amount of split screen & double-exposure dissolves to make do as Pumpkin & Mice become Coach and Four for Mary’s transition.  Perhaps if the print were in better shape or if director James Kirkwood weren’t so stingy with close-ups within a scene, stuck on tiny sets for palace scenes that look no more spacious than Mary‘s garret bedroom.  (The film probably shot in Manhattan, Astoria Studios in Queens not yet built.)  What you do get to see is Mary’s first husband Owen Moore as Prince Charming, young, handsome and not yet drinking or abusing Mary, and to watch Mary pull off that 12 o'clock devolution with no more than a simple cut as she runs down the stairs in finery with a clock insert before we cut back to a medium close-up with her Cinderella now back to rags.  Simple, and ridiculously effective.  Nice fresh score from Donald Sosin in the Pickford Foundation edition (a bonus on THROUGH THE BACK DOOR/’21 –  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/through-back-door-1921.html) or various subfusc Public Domain dupes with canned music or worse.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The Pickford/Kirkwood team is seen to far better advantage in next year’s FANCHON THE CRICKET/’15.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/fanchon-cricket-1915.html  BTW, if James Kirkwood sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking of his namesake son, a co-writer on A CHORUS LINE.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  In the original Cinderella story, even before Charles Perrault got to it, the slippers weren’t glass, but fur (it’s a mistranslation) and one of the step-sisters hacks off some of her foot to try and make it fit.  Shades of SAW.  Yikes!