Tess of the Storm Country

What a difference 10 years makes: Edwin Porter shaped cinema during its infancy by his 1903's "The Great Train Robbery" and the fantasy film "The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend" while working at Edison Studios. Porter was hired by Adolph Zukor as chief director in 1912 for his new Famous Players Film Company. Zukor discovered later the former film projectionist turned director was more of a mechanic than a dramatic artist who would have an uncomfortable relationship with his actors.

Porter's skills at keeping up with the rapidly advancing changes in cinema's artistic merits by 1914 was falling well behind the leading directors. Actress Mary Pickford, who had signed onto the Famous Players Company the year before, noticed Porter's lack of imagination when directing April 1914's "Tess of Storm Country," based on Grace Miller White's 1909 best-selling novel. This was Pickford's fourth film under Porter's direction, and the actress, who learned the craft of making movies under D. W. Griffith, finally boiled over by Porter's lack of adopting the medium's new techniques. "He knew nothing about directing," Pickford fumed, "Nothing." She described him as simply setting up a stationary camera and in tableau fashion let the scene play out. "Tess" is the only surviving feature film of the four she made with Porter--although an earlier film, "A Good Little Devil," has one of five reels in existence. It would be the last movie the two worked together.

Her harsh criticism of Porter, however, didn't stop Pickford from realizing "Tess" was "the beginning of my career" as far as her enormous public popularity went. As one biographer noted, the movie "sent her career into orbit and made her the most popular actress in America, if not the world." Her performance alone, despite the director's unimaginative camera setups, was called simply stunning. She would go on to remake "Tess" in 1922.

Meanwhile, Porter was soon tinkering with 3-D film equipment before being hired by the Precision Machine Company, a projector manufacturing company. He would live to be 71, dying in the Hotel Taft in New York City in 1941.

Mary Pickford is "Tess" - a penniless girl who lives with her father in what we might, nowadays, call a shanty town on the shores of a lake. He makes his living by poaching until one day a corpse - the gamekeeper - is discovered and father (David Hartford) is in the frame for the murder. Needless to say, this leaves "Tess" in a bit of a tizz, before she is befriended by "Frederick" (Harold Lockwood) and his sister "Teola" (Olive Carey) who introduce her to God. With the aid of a filched bible, she begins to find hope and a case for optimism - which is duly rewarded when local law professor "Young" (H. R. Macy) helps her to secure a re-trial for her father. Meantime, "Teola" is having a pretty torrid time with her man "Dan" (Jack Henry) who abandons her, and their child. "Tess", seeing how down and ill her friend has become takes the child and cares for him. "Frederick" comes to the wrong conclusion about his protégée and together with his puritanical father and the rest of their community, they shun her. It is only when the child is gravely ill, and "Tess" takes him to be "sprinkled" in church, that the truths come out and redemption for all is sought. Pickford is superb in this - she has mastered the looks, gestures and nuance of the street urchin. Despite the obvious social disadvantages of her position, she is a kind and thoughtful soul - and that does come across well here. The production isn't great, though. Outdoors, not so much, but the indoor scenarios are too rigidly staged. There is precious little camera movement and, particularly during one of the not uncommon storms, the whole thing has a sterility that not even she - and, to be fair Lockwood, can really enliven. It is very much a vehicle for the star, and she does her best (a little too enthusiastically at times) with this story that is not without it's tragedy. Edwin Porter keeps the pace moving along well, and if you do get the chance to hear it with a decent score, then it is indeed worth watching.

It's a wonder 94 years after the first screening copies still exist. I had the opportunity to watch it and it was magnificent! As usual, sweet little Mary Pickford knows like no other how to mix comedy with drama. At the time, Tess of the Storm Country became a huge success. What else could it have been? Pickford clearly had fun shooting this film and probably was still buoyed up by the success of her previous film A Good Little Devil. The movie revolves around Tessibel Skinner, a little girl who is enjoying her life, despite the fact she's poor. When her father is put on trial for murder, she is devastated and tries everything to save him. But exactly how much is that going to cost? The movie had great outdoor sets, which makes the film a cultural pleasure. Pickford remade the film in 1922 after a few box office mistake and it became a hit all over again. The audience just can't stop adoring sweet little Tessibel Skinner.

"Daniel J. Frohman Presents America's Foremost Screen Actress, MARY PICKFORD in the famous tale of a woman's heroism, "TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY" by Grace Miller White, Produced by The Famous Players Film Co., Adolph Zukor Pres., Under the Personal Direction of Edwin S. Porter" read the opening titles. Then Miss Pickford in a beautiful dress emerges from a stage curtain and, speaking to people behind it, plops some flowers into a vase.

No one quite knew how to produce a feature-length movie in 1914. Zukor's idea was to offer "Famous Players in Famous Plays". This often resulted in stodgy reproductions of key scenes, held together by chapter-heading titles and the audience's understanding of the story. TESS is an example of this, and it has its problems, particularly with continuity. In fact, about the 50-minute mark, Mary pops out of a trash can for no reason I could tell and director Porter loses all sense of what is going on. He advances the plot by means of letters written by the characters for the next ten minutes. A skilled editor would have been a great deal of help.

In the end, this movie winds up a series of short stories linked solely by the performance of Mary Pickford. She performs most of it in a comic mode, ready to kick offenders and deal with often awful situations, wearing a ragged dress that is never patched nor trimmed over the nine months or so that the movie covers. She carries this movie solely on her acting abilities, while most of the people around her act like jerks. Only Olive Golden (later Carey) as the unwed mother whose baby Miss Pickford cares for, offers anything in the way of a worthwhile supporting performance.

Miss Pickford would return to the story eight years later, when film technique had caught up to the rigors of features and the self-possession to tell a story without reference to another, "superior" medium. That is the version to see. Except for Miss Pickford's performance, you can skip this one.

A wealthy resident attempts to dispossess squatters who live near his home, which leads to a false accusation of murder.

The film starred Mary Pickford, in a role she would reprise eight years later for the 1922 adaptation by John S. Robertson. Now, that in itself is rather interesting. It was not unusual in the early days of Hollywood to make a film and then make it again a few years later, sometimes using the same cast. Today we get upset when a film is remade that fast, but it sort of made sense at the time because technology was improving so quickly.

The strangest thing is that the remake is the better-known film, but this one is the one preserved as historically and culturally important. It seems like the one that more people had seen would have a bigger impact.