Bizarre mixture of Cinderella story, Gaelic myth, and Irish politics in this 1922 silent film that exists without any director named. The cast is made up of amateurs with the exception of American actor Jack Hopkins. Most of the other named actors here have only this film as a credit.
Here, the fairy godmother is named Mother Machree, a figure famous from the 1910 Irish song. "machree" means "dearest." Here she not only fights the nasty stepmother (here played by a man and credited as W. Calhoun) and the ugly stepsisters (Delia Coghlan and Elizabeth O'Hara), she also battles the devil and calls on the spirit of Michael Collins to defeat the devil and the British. The Cinderella character is named Emralila and is played by Pattie MacNamara. Her prince is the Prince of Tara and is played by W.H. Marcy.
The intertitles are sprinkled with Gaelic words and some of the titles are in verse. Lots of location shooting and various sets and camera tricks show this to have been a professional production, but most details are lost in the Irish mists of time.
Original film was produced by Cardinal films whose only other production was "Knight of the Eucharist" in 1922. Both films were distributed in the US by Creston Films. The copy that exists was retitled "The Irish Cinderella" and features a thunderous organ score, probably by Rosa Rio.
