The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)

Maurice Tourneur: The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) with Mary Pickford. Photo: IMDb.

Mary Pickford directed by Maurice Tourneur in The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917). Photo: IMDb.

THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL / Pieni rikas tyttö-parka (Paramount-Artcraft, US 1917)
    Dir: Maurice Tourneur; ph: John van den Broek, Lucien Andriot; sc: Frances Marion, from the play by Eleanor Gates; des: Ben Carré; cast: Mary Pickford, Madeline Traverse, Charles Wellesley, Gladys Fairbanks; rel. 5.3.1917.
    35 mm, 5750 ft, 77’ (20 fps), The Mary Pickford Foundation, Milestone Film & Video, UCLA Film and Television Archive (via Dennis Doros).
    The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) online.
    In the presence of Richard Koszarski and Carl Meyers.
    Grand piano: Phil Carli.
    Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fort Lee, 10 Oct 2004.

Richard Koszarski (GCM): "The Paragon Studio, just south of Universal’s studio on Main Street, was built by Jules Brulatour in 1915 largely for the use of his artistic partner, Maurice Tourneur. At first they produced films here for World, later for the Mary Pickford Corporation, then Paramount-Artcraft. Eventually the facility was taken over by Selznick before reverting to Brulatour, who continued to make films here with his protégée, Hope Hampton, well into the 1920s. The Poor Little Rich Girl was one of two Pickford vehicles made at the Paragon by Tourneur, and probably the first film in which he and his art director, Ben Carré, experimented with the use of stylized settings (they would make the far more radical The Blue Bird and Prunella in this same studio the following year). Tourneur was a master of theatrical melodrama, but he also waged a one-man campaign to translate the ideals of Gordon Craig, Max Reinhardt, and Maurice Maeterlinck to the cinema screen. The balance of dream and reality worked perfectly here, but none of Tourneur’s subsequent “artistic” features gained equal commercial success." – Richard Koszarski (GCM)

AA: A masterpiece combining the talents of Mary Pickford and Maurice Tourneur, based on a compelling screenplay by Frances Marion, displaying the enchanting symbolist design by Ben Carré to create a quest between harsh reality and a dreamworld of the fairy-tale. A turning-point for Mary Pickford: for the first time she portrayed a girl so much younger than herself. A turning-point for Maurice Tourneur in his unique style soon developed in The Blue Bird and Prunella. Tourneur refined the tableau style and opened the way to new perspectives in stylization before Caligari. A beautiful print. One of the greatest highlights of this edition of the GCM. ****