The Love Light

Mary Pickford is worth watching even if the melodramatic plot wears a bit thin toward the end. But this movie isn't one of her finest hours.

A bucolic Italian light house keeper (Pickford) rescues an "American" sailor from the sea after he is "shipwrecked." She should have known that he wasn't American because he can speak more than one language.

During the course of this movie, set in the time of the First World War, Pickford's character looses both her brothers in the war (one through her own actions), falls in love with and marries a German spy who commits suicide after she turns him in, goes insane, gives birth and has her baby stolen by her best friend, and welcomes home her old boyfriend who has been blinded in the war. She is not having a good day.

If you liked "Sophie's Choice", you might like this movie. For me, it was just too much contrived melodrama. The moral that war destroys, not just the soldiers at the front, but the lives of their friends, family, and loved ones at home, is a valid one. It just isn't conveyed with much subtlety by this movie.