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To say that this isn't one of Pickford's great films is putting it mildly. It's really a train wreck of a movie, that never
finds its tone and never delivers on its promise.
It's promise is intriguing, though. Pickford plays a juvenile way younger than the actress's years, but the story suggests
that the character is immature for her age, so the discombobulation works in a subliminal sort of way. Little Annie Rooney
is a tomboy in the ghetto, on the verge of sexual awakening, prolonging it by childish play until the moment she begins to
have feelings for Joe Kelly and things start to change.
Pickford probably understood the power of this underlying theme, but the director William Beaudine clearly didn't. His
direction here gives one a deeper appreciation of Marshall Neilan's genius. Handed material like this, Neilan would have inflected
the humor with revelations of character, foreshadowings of change, and inflected the melodrama with lighthearted irony. Beaudine
applies no such subtlety or wit and the results are leaden.
The film is beautifully shot by Charles Rosher, and Pickford's pantomime is deeply fascinating, but somehow the humor
always seems precious and strained, the melodrama ponderous and unconvincing. William Haines, who plays Joe Kelly, has none
of the sexual energy which might have made the tomboy Annie's attraction to him comprehensible on a physical and psychological
level.
The "Our Gang" comic routines of the opening sequences, the endearing portrait of a multi-ethnic ghetto united
by the fatherly figure of Annie's cop-on-the-beat dad, the melodrama of the criminal gangs which threaten to undo her father's
good work, all seem to be parts of different movies -- never cohere into a unified vision. It breaks one's heart to see Pickford
apply her genius to such a hopeless cause.
The recent DVD release has the most God-awful score imaginable -- loops of stock music assembled with absolutely no regard
to what's happening on screen. In the middle of the action climax it suddenly offers up a jaunty rendition of "Jingle
Bells", with kazoo accompaniment. "Little Annie Rooney" isn't a masterpiece, but it's important simply because
Pickford is important. Saddling it with a score like this constitutes an act of criminal insult.
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