#jack standing

Fanchon, the Cricket (1915)

Fanchon the Cricket* was a family affair for silent film actress Mary Pickford. When she passed away in 1979, she died thinking that the film – the only one to star herself and her two other siblings, Lottie and Jack – as lost to history. The survivability statistics on silent films is grim reading. In a 2013 study, the Library of Congress estimated that around seventy-five percent of all silent films are lost films. One wonders how overjoyed the folks at the Mary Pickford Foundation, which assists with film preservation efforts and has archived various Pickford-related materials for research purposes, must have felt when they learned in 2012 that the Cinémathèque Française unearthed a print of Fanchon the Cricket. In a six-year, cross-Atlantic collaboration, the Pickford Foundation, Cinémathèque Française, the British Film Institute (BFI; which possessed an incomplete and quickly degrading nitrate print), and L'Immagine Ritrovata (Bologna) restored the print and scanned it in 4K. The restoration is stunning, even if Fanchon the Cricket, as a film, is rough in its craft.

Directed by James Kirkwood (primarily an actor) and co-written by Kirkwood and Frances Marion (1930’s The Big House, 1931’s The Champ) and distributed by Famous Players Film Company (in 1916, this studio would merge with the Lasky Company to become the studio now known as Paramount), Fanchon the Cricket is based on George Sand’s novel La Petite Fadette. Mary Pickford is Fanchon, an uninhibited waif (yet another one of Pickford’s numerous young waif characters) that cares not for the judgments and trappings of society. She lives in the woods with her grandmother (Gertrude Norman), whom the townspeople rumor to be a witch (her appearance, attire, and behavior are only inflaming the rumors). During a May Day picnic, Fanchon saves a young man named Landry Barbeau (Jack Standing), the son of a prosperous local businessman (Russell Bassett), from drowning. In the aftermath, the two find themselves smitten over each other. Landry offers marriage, despite his parents’ preference for the straitlaced Madelon (Lottie Pickford), but Fanchon declines. Realizing the familial strife that might occur in such an arrangement, Fanchon will not marry Landry unless his father approves and asks her to.

Without much soft lighting to brighten up one of the most luminous faces of silent film (there are mostly shots outdoors in this movie), Mary Pickford’s physical acting draws in the viewer in every frame she occupies. Pickford’s movements through the forests and thick grass resemble a being at home in nature – why be concerned over mud and pesky insects? Compared to the weighty, measured movements of her town-dwelling co-stars, she flits and skips without much regard for anyone else she encounters. Her mannerisms, as Fanchon, also reflect a complete lack of socialization. When witnessing the silliness of other people, she never hides how she feels, whether that is amusement or annoyance. Only after Fanchon’s brief courtship with Landry do we see that remarkable nuanced dramatic acting Pickford was capable of. In those moments where Fanchon steps out of her childhood for the first time, we see the inklings of her self-realization of the responsibility and affection for others. Fanchon never stops being the wild girl of the woods but, for precious moments in this film, she becomes a young woman who allows herself to love. The transformation, partial though it may be, is convincing, and that is all thanks to Mary Pickford’s brilliant performance.

Shot on location in Delaware Gap, Pennsylvania in an era before the relocation of all major American movie studios to Hollywood (and when a significant amount of major studio filmmaking was still taking place on the Atlantic coast of the U.S.), the environs surrounding the characters features dense foliage and placid creeks and rivers. Fanchon the Cricket, set in either late 18th or early 19th century America, inhabits a space where the young nation was still mostly undeveloped nature. Cinematographer Edward Wynard (the personal cinematographer of actress Norma Talmadge) photographs the action lushly, and the natural outdoors lighting almost makes the sprawling meadows and rippling waterways a dreamscape. Even if the production design might seem too artificial, the natural surroundings make Fanchon’s deep forest shack and small town-yet-posh backwoods America a believable, specific place in time.

At a period of film history when filmmakers were still experimenting in narrative form and how to interweave themes throughout a film, Fanchon the Cricket has too many subplots that never satisfactorily resolve or are too tangentially related to the central plot. Kirkwood and Marion’s scenario, despite showering attention on some of the supporting characters, never lend enough depth to anyone outside of Fanchon and Landry to make them anything but caricatures. The unnecessary bloat makes the films one-and-a-quarter-hour runtime (this is based on the speed of the Pickford Foundation/ Cinémathèque Française/BFI/ L'Immagine Ritrovata restoration; Fanchon the Cricket is a 5-reeler) seem longer than it should be.

The recent restoration of Fanchon the Cricket comes with a modern soundtrack by Julian Ducatenzeiler and Andy Gladbach that is based in twenty-first century folk rock. This mixture – of early American setting and modern music – is disruptive and jarring. As much as Ducanteziler and Gladbach attempt to mirror the film’s sylvan scenery through their orchestration and modern melodic progressions, the disconnect between the film and their score also extends to the emotional journey that Fanchon takes on-screen. Personally, I prefer a simple piano, organ, or small ensemble score for silent film re-releases (most silent films, when they were first released, were accompanied by these instruments). I am no opponent of using anachronistic musical instruments and melodic and harmonic phrasing for re-released silent films (sci-fi and fantasy silent films might benefit from these most). But composers for such projects should heed what the filmmakers were trying to create – including the setting and the emotional textures of their film. Ducanteziler and Gladbach, in this restoration of Fanchon the Cricket, have not done their due musical diligence.  

Lottie and Jack Pickford led markedly different lives than their sister – who would go on to co-found United Artists (UA) with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith and a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). As the least known of the trio, Lottie’s acting career was already on the downswing (by choice) upon Fanchon the Cricket’s theatrical release. Lottie was a socialite, whose passion was to party, experiencing joie de vivre to a maximalist extent. Slightly more established as an actor than Lottie but not as much as Mary, Jack Pickford was a primary figure in a scandal where rich young men drafted by the military would dole out bribes to avoid military service in World War I. Like Lottie, he too was consumed by a socialite’s lifestyle, leading to a life of alcoholism and drug addiction for both.

Moviegoers in the mid-1910s adored Pickford in her most common roles as children and waifs. The year after Fanchon the Cricket, Pickford signed a lucrative deal with Famous Players’ Adolph Zukor that gave her the foremost authority on the films she worked for. In early Hollywood, so strongly associated with movie moguls like Zukor, Mack Sennett (Keystone Studios), Carl Laemmle (Universal), and others, Pickford’s deal was an outlier. The authority she assumed on her productions was a refreshing development for Pickford in an industry filled with stories of interference from the top studio executives. These experiences making films on this new contract helped inspire the formation of United Artists three years later. UA’s creation was a clear statement of Pickford’s desire to foster the talents of herself and others as filmmakers – something that she would continue to champion for decades to come.

The Pickford Foundation/Cinémathèque Française/BFI/L'Immagine Ritrovata restoration is wonderful to behold. The tinting in the restoration was based off the notes found with the BFI nitrate print – making this cross-Atlantic restoration the closest lucky modern viewers might ever get to watching Fanchon the Cricket the way James Kirkwood originally intended. For silent film fans and especially those who want to see the works of one of the most important actresses of all time, this restoration of a complete Fanchon the Cricket is a fortuitous gift.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.