Suds

A not-entirely-successful, offbeat, change-of-pace for America's alleged Sweetheart, Mary Pickford. Playing a Cockney laundress in an excellently re-created London, she is at her best with the comedy: falling in and out of laundry bins, hiding under baskets, keeping a horse in her apartment, etc. As for the pathos, our heroine is less sympathetic here than usual, mainly because most of the character's problems are brought on by herself and her own unhealthy fantasy life (some of which is depicted in a lengthy, but wonderfully loopy, imaginary flashback). There is no real villain to overcome but herself -- and she fails to manage a victory. The ending (or endings -- three different final scenes were filmed) is abrupt and not terribly convincing. The supporting cast, though competent, is unmemorable -- except, perhaps, for Lavender, the horse, who gets a couple of good bits, including a final sight gag in one of the endings: pulling a chair, and the movie, out from under poor Mary.

I love silent films, but I have to admit some of the old films don't translate well to the 21st century. Some of the older "classics" now seem antiquated and dull. However, I am happy to report that this is not the case with SUDS. Despite being an 86 year-old film, it still is good fun and is one of the most watchable Mary Pickford films because it doesn't take itself very seriously.

Mary plays a rather homely laundress and there is absolutely no hint of her beauty in this film. This laundress is pretty clumsy but nice. However, because her life is so drab, she dreams of a better life--even going so far as making up a fictitious boyfriend out of a guy who forgot his shirt there over 8 months ago. She described him as being a duke and talks of how he will whisk her away.

At the same time, there's a parallel plot of the horse cart that delivers the laundry from this business. The driver seems to like Mary but his feelings are not professed. Also, Mary adores the old broken-down horse and laments that it's about to be sent to the glue factory by the nasty owner of the business. She runs to its rescue and buys the horse--keeping it in her apartment! Then, the film offers two different endings on the DVD from Image Entertainment--one the American ending and the other the European ending. Both are different--one is a little sweeter, the other funnier. I recommend if you have a chance, view both endings--they are both worth seeing. There apparently was a third melancholy ending that was suggested by Chaplin that was also used, but apparently it is no longer in existence. I actually am glad, as I liked the more up-beat endings.

The bottom line is that the film is amusing and touching and well worth your time. Though a "slight film" with modest pretenses, I actually preferred it to many of the big reputation silent films.

A Mary Pickford vehicle. I've seen a small handful of her films, and this is probably my favorite of them so far. It's no great work of art, but it's a cute little comedy and Pickford's performance is quite funny. Here she plays a Cockney laundry girl. She dreams of being wooed by a nobleman, and has even told stories to her teasing co-workers about her dream man being real. A subplot about a horse Pickford saves from the glue factory leads her to find true romance. While that description sounds more like typical silent melodrama, it's really lightly handled and goofy, with a lot of slapstick. It never reaches the kind of brilliant humor of the great silent clowns, but it's quite enjoyable.

Mary Pickford abandons the cute visage of her curls and good looks and sweetness and adopts a severe ugly looking visage (aka Stella Maris) and remains fascinating. It is actually hard to recognize the woman as Mary Pickford. But it goes to show you are still fascinated with the girl even when she is looking ugly.

This was necessarily a fun movie with lots of gags and loonie moments - such as giving the horse the Pickford hair curls, spending a night with a horse some good slap-stick. Lots of banter with her work mates.

But as usual there are a number of Pickford moments in this movie. There was a momentary change in feeling when we see Mary realize her hoped for suitor is embarrassed by the way she looks dressed up in her best rags and the dialog that follows in that scene. And the rags Mary has to wear are really really rag rags - hard to imagine rags so bad.

In fact though this was a comedy they really did go to some effort to create the depressing dank and poor setting of a London laundry. It was oppressive but essential to the comedy.

The end came upon us suddenly and lacked development though of course it would have been predictable and could written itself but, it would have been nice to have gone through the process for the sake of feeling complete. I wonder if they had time pressures, or if they had just finished a reel and didn't want it flow over into part of another reel.

Despite the minor ending deficiency this was a very enjoyable movie and especially so because Mary didn't look like Mary.

Okay, so I've checking message boards and after seeing pretty much all of the Mary Pickford films one can get on video-which is just a small percentage-I have to say Suds is one of my favorites. It's really goofy, and yeah, a little uneven, but in a way that's it's charm. It has some real goofy charm, I like that Pickford plays a total screw-up. Most of her intentions are good, but she's also a liar, she's a very dynamic person. Often I get bored of Mary Pickford films because she would get stuck playing one-note characters. Amanda is an interesting character because she's such a dork. It's a little sad because seeing odd but charming choices she makes as Amanda, such as the scene where she can't stop scratching the itch on her arm, or the scene where she stitches a portrait of guy she likes into his own shirt show that while she got more opportunities than most women of her time if things had been different she may have been female Charline and not a footnote in cinema history-a title she doesn't deserve anyway. it's a good film.