Through The Back Door (1921)
Directed By: Alfred E. Green
Starring: Mary Pickford, Gertrude Astor, Wilfred Lucas, Helen Raymond
Length: 89 min.
Jeanne (Mary Pickford) is left with a maid as a child when her mother marries a wealthy man. Years pass before her mother shows up to get her, but the maid had grown so attached to the little girl that she tells the mother that the child had recently died.
When the child becomes a teenager, Germany invades her country, and the maid sends her off to America to find her real mother. When she gets there, with 2 orphan Belgian children, her mother lives in a mansion with many servents. She is repeatedly denied access to her mother, and is hired as a maid, claiming the orphans as her own.
As time goes on, and her chances at teller her mother who she is are thwarted, she learns of a plot against her mother and step-father.
I found the movie to be much better than the previous Pickford movie I had seen (
Little Lord Fauntleroy). First off, Pickford actually plays a woman (teenage girl) in this film. I found the plot to be a little quicker and more involved than in
Fauntleroy. There's just more going on and it doesn't drag.
Still, the movie's drawback for me is one of personal preference. I find plots that rely on repeated occurances to be annoying. I mean, she's trying to hand her mother a letter this whole time, and then she tries and leave it for her on her nightstand, the mother accidently knocks it on the floor. There's just too many coincidences going on. Pickford's character is not assertive at all in trying to get her mother the information that shows her who she is. That causes a lot of these situations and I found myself rolling my eyes a few times.
Annoying plot devises aside, it was a pretty decent movie. Low Historical Rating since, much like
Little Lord Fauntleroy, the movie isn't referenced much at all. (Also, for the image above, I could not find a pic of the movie, so I had to go with movie poster.)
Entertainment Rating: 5/10
Historical Rating: 3/10