This film does not fail to engage and move, even in 2008 to an audience only familiar with modern over-produced sound and computer enhanced techniques.
The experience of the movie goer in 1922 who could only see this in a cinema with others on their big screen must have been truly profound and a thoroughly satisfying experience.
One has to ask could a film maker today make a two hour silent movie and make it interesting and achieve the same structure tempo and balance as this movie has. Silent film making was pure art, it had to hold the attention through its structure, direction and acting - there was no padding out with more words or computer generated distractions. A poorly made or uninteresting silent movie is unwatchable.
This film needs to be put into context for those who might be disconcerted with the mention of Christian themes. This is not a 'Christiany' film, it is not selling anything. These themes along with reference to current moral standards often appear in this era - also church going on Sundays was a national past time, Christianity was a given in most households thus the film is only depicting normal life as it was then. The themes would have rung true and deep at the time.
It is most odd given the strong support to good Christian thinking of this particular movie (and it is not preaching religion to anyone, only highlighting the difference between hypocrites and the honest)that in 1922 a Pastor in an open debate with a representative from the film industry with a large crowd denounced Pickford as an example of immorality, along with some other individuals he named. NY Times 1922.
Maybe they should have watched this movie that also came out in 1922 and, learned some lessons.
The Pastor complained that since the film industry had started church attendance had dropped 500,000. The film representative in the debate however made the following observations; that saloon attendance had also dropped, that there were far more pastors in prison than actors (fact) and that selecting a few examples from among the many was not representative of the whole.
Thus there was an ongoing battle between church and the film industry during the early days of film.
This is a wonderful film about being honest and true to family friends and to be willing to make sacrifices. Mary Pickford, naive, honest, feisty, full of happiness and joy, faithful, humorous and silently sacrificing - though poor and uneducated she represented the perfect character. This however is not thrust down our throat but revealed bit by bit through the film.
This is reminiscent of some modern Chinese films where characters are slowly, languidly revealed over the course of a film and it is this tempo that creates a stronger connection with the character.
It has a smooth even tempo for the first half that builds all the elements for the last section. The last 30 minutes are great film making and it has to be appreciated it was achieved without the benefit of sound, running dialog - it was achieved through deft acting and great directing. It is sometimes surprising to realize that at the end of the film you haven't hear a word spoken, but it feels like you have heard everything.
The supporting cast put in great performances especially Gloria Hope, Jean Hersholt and Lloyd Hughes.
The final few minutes are typical Pickford understated humor as she goes outside under the pretext of sweeping the snow, a near perfect balance and ending. This is a special type of touching humor that should not be underestimated. Chaplin used this device often and copied some of from Pickford.
Another special observation to be made about Silent films and especially Pickford films is that the star often has to hold the camera for much of the movie without the audience becoming jaded or bored, with the actors over-exposure. That Pickford is usually thoroughly the center of attention through most of her movies but the people still couldn't get enough of her is a testament to her fine acting ability.

A painfully protracted, maudlin and predictable drama, my twenty-fifth Sidney Lumet film, Garbo Talks, gets filed precipitously on the low quality end of my quest.
The film documents a harried young working man named Gilbert (Ron Silver), who is son to Estelle Rolle (Anne Bancroft), eccentric, feisty and above all, an obsessive fan of Greta Garbo. When Estelle becomes afflicted with a brain tumor, her son decides to go on an obsessive quest of his own: track down Greta Garbo, and bring her to his mother.
Anne Bancroft is in full-on, chew-the-scenery Auntie-Mame mode here, that kind of feisty ol' gal that film loves, where she mouths off to people, and stands up for her ideals, and ends up in jail all the time. She stands outside of the film as an obvious artificial construct, and every scene with her is yuk-yuk lame; every note striking false. The rest of the characters are equally as one-dimensional, but tremendously less-interesting. Ron Silver is flat as can be, and his attempted love triangle is as telegraphed as anything else in the film: He is dating affluent Lisa Rolfe (Carrie Fisher), but becomes smitten with oddball co-worker Jane Mortimer (Catherine Hicks), and I called every scene three scenes before they happen.
That's the other problem. One-dimensional characters can survive if they are posited in an intriguing and captivating story, but there's simply nothing here. The film's pace is glacial, resplendent with extraneous material that strengthens absolutely nothing, and when the film does begin to follow a linear plot, it's both plodding and uninteresting. There are plenty of guest stars, so to speak, including Harvey Fierstein as a gay New Yorker (imagine that) in yet another highly inessential scene.
Late in the film, it attempts to make a halfway-decent statement on the nature of idolatry and its role in our lives, but by that time, none of the characters exist as real people, and the film had bored me into submission, so it functions as a case of far-too-little, far-too-late. The film is my twenty-fifth Lumet-directed film, making him easily my most-viewed director, but outside of a couple egregious misses (A Stranger Among Us, anyone?), he hasn't plumbed the painfully uninteresting depths of Garbo Talks.
{Grade: 4.5/10 (C/C-) / #21 (of 24) of 1984 / #23 of 25 Lumet films}