Lucky Star

The story is generic but it's all about presentation for Borzage. The performances are accompanied by appropriate lighting and angles that emphasize the blossoming romance and impending obstacles before either one becomes apparent in the narrative. Gaynor has an amazing screen presence imbuing her character with innocence and romanticism even as her actions betray a more complex character. The two male leads keep up with her quite well. A fantastic production, but the core is a little lacking.

The extent to which I was emotionally invested in this film (by the end pretty much every line and every decision a character made had me gripped, and my emotions were running haywire) is on it's own enough to make it a favourite of mine. That it's also stunningly beautiful (with some great usage of light and shadow, and some of the sets seeming like out of a fairytale) just adds to this film's brilliance. And that ending is sublime.

Drippingly romantic and photographed like a dreamscape, this late silent by Frank Borzage makes great use of repeated shots (one a vantage point from the edge of a forest looking onto a cottage, and another of a room, almost at tatami mat level, of a man struggling to walk), and builds nicely to its well-earned climax.

"Recently recovered and restored, this third panel in the Borzage-Janet Gaynor-Charles Farrell triptych is an unblushing tribute to the miracles that love can bring." - Dan Callahan

Thank God for women's liberation and everything, but the way in which Mary gleefully perseveres through constant degradation in this film (not just by "the bully". Even her relationship with the "nice guy", who likens her to a sheep, begins with an over-the-knee spanking), is, from a modern perspective, endearingly quaint. I did like Street Angel better.

Adorable.