The Pride of the Clan (2024 restoration in progress, David Pierce for the Mary Pickford Foundation)

Maurice Tourneur directs Mary Pickford in The Pride of the Clan (US 1917). Photo: Mary Pickford Foundation / Marc Wanamaker – Bison Archives.          

Den sista av sin ätt.

Working titles: The Lass of Killean; The Reeds of the Clan.

    US 1917 Mary Pickford Film Corporation. Dist: Artcraft Pictures Corporation. 

    Dir: Maurice Tourneur. Scen, adapt: Elaine Stern[e] [Carrington], Charles E. Whittaker. Photog: John van den Broek, Lucien Andriot; [asst. Charles Van Enger]. Des: Ben Carré (scenery). Ed: Clarence Brown.

    Cast: Mary Pickford (Marget MacTavish), Matt Moore (Jamie Campbell), Warren Cook (Robert, Earl of Dunstable), Kathryn Browne Decker (Countess of Dunstable), Ed Roseman (David Pitcairn), Joel Day (The Dominie), [Leatrice Joy (extra)].

    Loc: Marblehead (Massachusetts).

    Première: 1.7.1917 (Strand Theatre, NY). Rel: 8.1.1917. Copy: DCP (2K), 87' (from 35 mm pos. acet., 4100 ft, + 16 mm pos., 2800 ft [7 rls.], 19 fps); titles: ENG. Source: The Mary Pickford Foundation, Los Angeles.

    First preserved 1956 by the Library of Congress as a 16 mm master positive from Pickford’s nitrate camera negative; new 35 mm safety master positive created by the Mary Pickford Company in the 1960s; 16 mm edition created 1970 by David Shepard using both sources.

    Restoration in progress; narrative assembly prepared 2024 by David Pierce for the Mary Pickford Foundation using scans provided by the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

    43rd Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone 2024: Ben Carré. 

    Musical commentary: Donald Sosin, Elisabeth-Jane Baldry. 

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 8 Oct 2024

Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec (GCM 2024): "Kevin Brownlow, in Mary Pickford Rediscovered (1999), sets the scene: “Originally entitled The Lass of Killean, it was the first of two productions for Mary Pickford that Maurice Tourneur was obliged to make when he signed with Artcraft. … Shot on location in Marblehead, this film had a remarkable authentic look. … [Tourneur] brought to his pictures a sense of composition and lighting so striking that you can recognize a Tourneur film by a single frame. The story of Scottish fisherfolk provided him with his favorite elements – sea, storms, birds, boats – and he made a richly atmospheric production. … Tourneur makes no attempt to glamorize the characters with makeup or lighting. The little community, with its low thatched cabins, the pigs and geese wandering in the street, has a documentary reality. … The art director was Ben Carré, … whose attitude towards his craft was revolutionary. … The Pride of the Clan looks so authentic it might have been made in Scotland.”"

"In 1916 it was not common for a Fort Lee production to mount a full expedition to a distant location for extended shooting, but such was the case for the making of The Pride of the Clan. An open touring car was hired, with cameraman John van den Broek in the front seat next to the driver, and Maurice Tourneur and production manager Sam Mayer in the back seat with Ben Carré sandwiched between them. Off they went to scout the ocean coastline of New England from Connecticut to Maine, at which point they boarded a night train in Portland to return to Fort Lee."

"En route they stopped in Salem, Massachusetts. There they hired another car to take them to the small coastal village of Marblehead, and it was here that they found what would become the location for Killean, their story’s Scottish fishing village. It was on a rocky peninsula, Marblehead Neck, just east of the central village, that all the exterior sets were built, requiring a large amount of experienced crew and logistical support. “I had to requisition everyone, stagehands, carpenters, propmen, painters, and electricians,” Ben recalled. “I was very enthusiastic about the possibilities; I could build a village street leading to the rocky promontory dominating the view of the ocean. There below was a cove where Mary Pickford’s 40-foot boat would be beached.” According to reports, the film crew was there for 5-6 weeks."

"Drama wasn’t always scripted. On Sunday 12 November 1916, there was a near-tragedy. The old fishing schooner that had been towed out to sea to film some key scenes, containing Pickford, Tourneur, several cast members, and the cameramen, sprang a leak. Two cameras were lost as the schooner went down. Almost everyone jumped and swam for their lives. But Pickford and Tourneur were still on board; he saved her after a wave knocked her down, and they were lucky to escape with their lives. Crowds of spectators watched the filming daily; they witnessed the drama from the shore, and it was reported in Moving Picture World (2.12.1916). The company had to return for retakes."

"Pickford’s fans flocked to see the film when it opened in New York in January 1917, eager to see their favorite as a feisty Scottish lass who becomes chieftain of a clan. Variety (5.1.1917) enumerated the film’s strengths: “[It] is marked by many incidental details, which perhaps are not essential to the tale itself, but enrich the picture and go to the building of atmosphere. There is nothing sensational about the offering, but it has the strength of simplicity in the telling and picturesqueness of locals and character types. … The kirk of the village is made the centre of an interesting series of character scenes, the religious life of the community supplies good genre studies, [and] the local customs are worked nicely into the betrothal and courting scenes…” Local color is also added by lavish helpings of Scots dialect in the artwork intertitles."

"In her autobiography (Sunshine and Shadow, 1956) Pickford dismissed the film as a “disastrous failure,” recounting her close call. Brownlow notes that “Mary had forgotten one review [from Exhibitors Trade Review, 13.1.1917], which stated, ‘There is every possibility that the versatility she exhibits throughout the production will cause it to be listed by critics as the best film in which she appeared during her extraordinarily successful career as a star of silent drama.’” Following a screening in 1969, Richard Koszarski wrote in Film Quarterly (Winter 1969-1970, “Lost Films from the National Film Collection”): “Tourneur’s eye for composition is flawless, equaling or surpassing Griffith’s work of the same period, and the performances are more restrained than in much of Intolerance. Clearly this film was ten years ahead of its time.”" – Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec (GCM 2024)

AA: The most popular film in Finland this year is Tiina Lymi's Stormskärs Maja which belongs to a current of stories of Finnish "Storm Cliff Women" usually set in the Åland archipelago. There is also an international trend of young women's Bildungsromane where the protagonist living by the sea faces extreme hardship, often losing to the sea her father / brother / husband / son, or all of them. The Pride of the Clan is Mary Pickford's contribution. (The Ur-protagonist may be Penelope).

Maurice Tourneur conveys the formidable power of the elements, substituting the North Shore of Massachusetts for Scotland. The film starts in a raging storm. The father of Margie MacTavish (Pickford), a fisherman, perishes, regardless of desperate efforts to save him. To her great shock, Margie must accept the responsibility of the chieftain of the clan. In one of the most stirring moments we see her literally grow to the occasion when she rises to the stand to address the community.

Like in Stormskärs Maja, religion is of particular importance when people are waging a war against the elements and facing matters of life and death every day. Secularization is gaining room also on the Island of Killean, but Margie will have none of it. Wielding a whip she guides all to the church to sustain the sense of the community. Only the loner David Pitcairn stays outside, thinking that religion is meaningless.

Marget is dating a young fisherman, Jamie Campbell, and they are engaged in a traditional ceremony. But Jamie's foster mother, originally his nurse, now reports to the true mother, the Countess of Dunstable, that Jamie is alive and that she had reported his death so that she could raise him. When the Countess returns it seems obvious that they do not want Marget to be a part of their life. Jamie objects, but Marget with the chieftain's authority declares the case is closed. She has been living in a houseboat and lets it loose. Incredibly it may seem because there is a leak and the boat starts to sink. But perhaps there is a motive that is unconscious or even conscious, although it might seem out of character for the fighter type that Marget is. David Pitcairn the curmudgeon alerts the community. Jamie races to the rescue, and everything is settled.

In this film we meet the two sides of Mary Pickford's star persona: the eternal child and the woman growing up to face the hardest facts of life. For me, Mary Pickford is one of the greatest in the history of the cinema, but she is far from being recognized as widely as she would deserve. One reason is in the promotional material. In the publicity photos, her childish side is overdone in a way that may seem dated. In the films themselves there is no such problem.

Maurice Tourneur and Ben Carré provide a rich, dense and vivid sense of life on the Scottish island. I was thinking about a prominent recent film, The Outrun, with two great talents, Nora Fingscheidt & Saoirse Ronan (as the biologist Rona), set on the Orkney but failing to fully exploit the poetic possibilities of the Scapa Flow as the oceanic reflection of Rona's inner storm. In my viewing charts it gets outrun by Pickford & Tourneur I'm afraid.