THE LOVE LIGHT (1921) B/W "silent" 75m dir: Frances Marion

w/Mary Pickford, Fred Thomson, Evelyn Dumo

From Now Playing: A Viewer's Guide to Turner Classic Movies: "In this silent film, a girl fights between her love for a German spy and her sense of patriotism."

Unfortuneately, FilmFrog has been unable to find out much about this important film, which is the only surviving film of three that the screenwriter Frances Marion directed. For more about Marion and her career, consult FilmFrog's reviews of two documentaries on the work of early women filmmakers, REEL MODELS: THE FIRST WOMEN OF FILM and WITHOUT LYING DOWN: FRANCES MARION AND THE POWER OF WOMEN IN EARLY HOLLYWOOD.

A small, but tasty, tidbit about the film from The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960: "In 1920 the Mitchell camera prototype [which made "framing and focusing easier and faster"] was turned over to Charles Rosher for use in filming The Love Light (Frances Marion, 1921, Mary Pickford Productions). ... Figure 20.7 shows Rosher and Mary Pickford with the new camera, which Rosher used throughout the silent period. By 1921, the Mitchell Company was selling cameras, trying to break into the market that Bell & Howell had recently taken over."

This information certainly whets FilmFrog's appetite for seeing the film. Rosher was one of the directors of photography who won the very first Academy Award for Best Cinematography (the other being Karl Struss) for the beautifully filmed SUNRISE (1927).

Below is Figure 20.7: "Charles Rosher and Mary Pickford pose by the prototype Mitchell camera in 1920":