The Heart o' the Hills (1919)

THE HEART O' THE HILLS  (1919)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Sidney A. Franklin
    Mary Pickford, Harold Goodwin, Claire McDowell,
    Allan Sears, Sam De Grasse, Jack Gilbert
Little Mary plays a Kentucky mountain girl who loses her home when some swindlers steal her daddy's land. A quaint pastoral melodrama with Pickford at her most earnest and obvious. (She was 26, playing a 13-year-old, and the results aren't especially convincing, but nobody at the time wanted "America's Sweetheart" to do anything else.) Highlight: an extended barn-dance sequence where the locals kick up their heels. Lowlight: the part where Mary puts on a sheet and hood and joins a Klan-like gang of night-riding vigilantes. Look for young John Gilbert in an early juvenile role as a lad from the lowlands who has eyes for Mountain Mary.