The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) dir. Maurice Tourneur
554 notes
·
View notes
Mary Pickford in publicity stills for The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)
211 notes
·
View notes
One Dress a Day Challenge
February: Coeli's Monochrome Picks
The Poor Little Rich Girl / Mary Pickford as Gwendolyn
Coeli's comment: "Pickford is 25 playing 12 (!) here."
12 notes
·
View notes
The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) dir. Maurice Tourneur
130 notes
·
View notes
The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Mary Pickford, a 25-year-old Canadian, plays a 10-year-old New Yorker thanks to the power of silent movie magic. At one point, she lashes out against her miserable upbringing and is punished by being force-masculinized because of her dad's own gender trauma.
She quickly embraces the costume (there's even a very 2018 "it has pockets!" moment), and gets into a mud fight with the street boys. Of course, she is soon punished again, and cries with grief for her brief moment of cross-dressing class-traitor freedom.
The scenario isn't "good lbgt representation" (none of these are), but it is a bizarre glimpse into turn-of-the-century gender roles. The entire film has a tonal dissonance you don't see anymore (whimsical proto-Wizard-of-Oz dream sequences include one of her dad committing suicide), and this subplot in particular seems especially tragic and cruel from a modern point of view.
The Dream Lady (1918) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: Rosamund Gilbert becomes an independently wealthy woman and decides to move to a cottage and make her neighbors' dreams come true. Sydney Brown makes a "bold request," to spend her vacation as a boy, and Rosamund sets her up in an adorable dress-up sequence.
Sydney makes friends at da club with James Mattison, and they walk around arm-in-arm as boys do. But when her vacation is over, Sydney retransforms into a woman, prompting "pal" James to say, "I've seen people go through changes in their life, but never anything like this!"
There is another movie from the same year but from Germany called "I Don't Want to Be a Man," in which this I-thought-you-were-a-guy romance subplot is the main plot (and there's hilarious drunk makeouts). I recommend both movies since they are just lovely and very funny, even though it is sad about the cisheteronormativity. It isn't too much of a reach to interpret that these couples would consider themselves trans and gay in their private lives, even as they present straight in public.
There are 6 more movies on my Letterboxd list with this theme, so I might add them on to this post. Even though these movies were made later in the time, they aren't necessarily more progressive.
6 notes
·
View notes
The Poor Little Rich Girl - Maurice Tourneur - 1917 - USA
27 notes
·
View notes