drednm When the US entered World War I, the government forced Hollywood to churn out propaganda films. THE LITTLE American is probably the best of the lot because it stars Mary Pickford.Pickford plays a young woman torn between two men: Jack Holt (German) and Raymond Hatton (French), but her decision is delayed because of the war as both men enlist.When the ship Pickford is sailing on is sunk by the Germans (think Lusitania) because it is carrying munitions, Pickford has a great scene as she stands on the lifeboat and yells at the German commander. Later on, of course, she runs into both Holt and Hatton when she is being held as a war prisoner at a château.Director Cecil B. DeMille provides one truly great scene in this film as Pickford and Holt are wandering through a bombed-out village. They pass a destroyed church of which only one wall remains standing. Against the wall is a very large crucifix. As they stand and watch, the wall collapses but the Jesus figure remains, suspended in mid air. It's a very surreal moment in a film that is otherwise very straightforward and un-artsy.Pickford is, as always, a pleasure to watch. She was always a very natural actress who avoided the arm-waving histrionics many other actors of the day used. She's also very very pretty. Holt is very good here in a leading-man role. Hatton is OK. Among the list of name actors in "extra" parts are Wallace Beery, Ramon Novarro, Colleen Moore, Ben Alexander, Hobart Bosworth, Norman Kerry, Walter Long, James Neill, and Edythe Chapman.Not a great film, but interesting to see US propaganda at work.

wes-connors Mary Pickford ("Born on the Fourth of July" as Angela Moore) is "The Little American" (of French heritage); she falls in love with Jack Holt (as Karl Von Austreim), who had moved to America with his German father and American mother. French-American Raymond Hatton (as Count Jules de Destin of the "Fighting Destins") has fallen in love with Ms. Pickford. The love triangled threesome eventually wind up in France, with the Great War (World War I, in hindsight) complicating their lives considerably.A mostly entertaining, if propagandistically flawed, Cecil B. DeMille film. The torpedoing, and sinking, of a ship carrying Pickford is "Titanic"-like. The war intrigue gets dramatic as Pickford slowly becomes an undercover spy for France, while the Germans occupy her ancestral home. Of course, German lover Holt arrives. It was difficult to believe they took so long to recognize each other as he moved in for the rape, but it was dark; and, prior events had them believe each other dead. The film goes WAY over-the-top in its symbolism. Pickford was, by the way, Canadian - though, few could deny she wasn't a "Little American", for all intents and purposes.FUN to spot "extras" who later became major stars include Wallace Beery, Colleen Moore, and Ramon Novarro - especially, watch for Mr. Novarro exhibiting "star" quality during one of the film's more memorable sequences: Pickford and the wounded soldier saluting each other as he is taken by her on a stretcher. Novarro even gets Mary Pickford to write a letter for him; obviously, he's got a future in pictures. Also future-bound is Ben Alexander, who plays the boy "Bobby"; he becomes a dependable child actor, and grows up to become a Jack Webb partner on "Dragnet". ******* The Little American (7/12/17) Cecil B. DeMille ~ Mary Pickford, Jack Holt, Raymond Hatton

bsmith5552 "The Little American" is of course "America's Sweetheart", Mary Pickford. Produced and directed by Cecil B. De Mille, it tells the story of Angela Moore (Pickford) and her relationships with German-American Karl Von Austriem (Jack Holt) and French-American Count Jules de Destin (Raymond Hatton) during World War I. In a real propaganda move, there's an opening shot of Pickford standing before the American flag and giving the salute while smiling and winking at the audience. Pure De Mille.Prior to the outbreak of the war, both men are courting Angela with Austriem having the evident upper hand. Then, war is declared and Austriem and de Destin go off to Europe to join their respective country's forces.Angela, to be near the man she loves decides to sail for France however, en route her ship the Veritania (read: Lusitania) is sunk by a German submarine (in a sequence using less than convincing miniatures). Austrien receives a letter telling him that Angela is sailing to France on the doomed ship. Distraught, Austriem becomes one of the barbaric German soldiers drinking and carousing their way across France. De Destin meanwhile is wounded and loses an arm.Angela survives the sinking of the Veritania and goes to the château of her aunt who has conveniently just died making Angela the new owner. She turns the château into a hospital for wounded French soldiers and decides not to flee the oncoming Germans, to nurse the wounded.Before leaving the château, the French place a secret telephone from which the army can be alerted as to the location of the German guns. The Germans move in to the château and ravage the place, having their way with the female servants. With them is Austriem who in a drunken stupor tries to rape Angela in a darkened room before discovering that it is Angela and she is alive.Angela meanwhile is telephoning information to de Destin regarding the placements of German guns. She is subsequently arrested and despite Austriem's intervention on her behalf, both get sentenced to die. Just as they are about to be shot............................Evidently their were two versions of this film produced. I assume the original version was completed before America's entrance into the war in 1917. In that version, available in the DVD set: "Cecil B. De Mille: The Classics Collection" Angela with the help of de Destin, secures Austriem's release as a prisoner of war and returns home with him. In the version described in Ringgold & Bodeen's "The Films of Cecil B. De Mille", Austriem dies and she returns to America with de Destin, Obviously, little Mary couldn't be seen fraternizing with the enemy, hence the second version.Pickford was now Hollywood's first superstar and was commanding a salary of $10,000 per week. It was around this time that she married male superstar Douglas Fairbanks. The two would soon form United Artists along with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith and produce their own films.Also in the film in various smaller roles are Hobart Bosworth, Walter Long and Wallace Beery as German soldiers, Colleen Moore as one of the château maids and Ramon Novarro as a wounded French soldier.De Mille's last film with Ms. Pickford.

wmorrow59 Canadian-born Mary Pickford played the title role in this war melodrama under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille. They worked together on only two projects, and although Miss Pickford spoke of DeMille with respect in later years, she did not recall their collaboration or the resulting films with much fondness. I don't know why Mary didn't like working with DeMille, but I would hazard a guess it was because they were both larger-than-life personalities with egos to match, and very specific ideas about how to make movies. Certainly the films they made together feature the top production values we expect from them both, based on the career standards each would maintain, including first-rate cinematography and art design, Hollywood's best character actors in colorful supporting roles, etc.I don't know why Mary didn't like this particular film, either, but I can hazard a second guess. The Little American was made just after the U.S. entered the Great War, during the first flush of near-hysterical nationalist fervor that swept the nation, and it reflects that mood in ways that don't wear well in retrospect. This movie was designed to be propaganda of the red meat variety, meant to whip up feelings of righteous outrage. Here there is no room for political background, perspective, or dispassionate consideration of other points of view; in short, no room for reason. The Germans are merciless brutes, period. All they understand is force, period. Perhaps, with the passage of time, Miss Pickford wasn't comfortable with this absolutism, or with the super-charged passion of the storytelling on display here. Today we can look back at this film and its siblings (such as D. W. Griffith's Hearts of the World) with historical curiosity and the distance afforded by hindsight, but, despite the passage of some ninety years, many viewers will find these movies painful to watch today, not only because of the ugly experiences depicted or the ugly feelings they stir, but because of our awareness of the very real impact this sort of propaganda had on contemporary viewers. Audiences of 1917 cheered for Mary and the Allied troops, gasped at German atrocities, and cursed those dirty Huns. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that some young men who saw this film may have found in it the inspiration to enlist, and who knows what happened to them after that. It's no wonder the star had little affection for this project.The film tells the story of a young American woman named Angela Moore -- born on the Fourth of July, no less -- who is courted by a Frenchman and a German, although she is decidedly more fond of her German suitor, Karl. When war breaks out her suitors, naturally, wind up on opposite sides of the conflict. Meanwhile Angela attempts to sail to France at the invitation of her invalid aunt, but her ship (here called the "Veritania") is torpedoed by a German submarine and she narrowly escapes with her life. This harrowing sequence was obviously based on the destruction of the Lusitania less than two years earlier, and surely must have hit a raw nerve in many viewers when the film was first released. The German sub commander and his crew, surfacing to observe their handiwork, flash searchlights on the sinking ship and look on coldly as Angela and her fellow passengers tumble off the tilted deck and plummet into the water, making no effort to assist.Angela reaches shore and finds her way to her aunt's château, but discovers that the old lady has died and that the house and its grounds are at the center of a pitched battle for territory between the French and the Germans. Perhaps it goes without saying that she encounters both of her former suitors under very different circumstances and is torn between them, although her political sympathies are fully with the Allied cause. Angela allows the French to turn her house into a makeshift hospital. Despite the danger she remains on the scene when the château is overrun and commandeered by the Germans. They regard her as little more than a galley servant, and in one painful scene she is compelled to kneel before a German general and pull off his muddy boots. (But Angela gets off easy next to the household staff of chambermaids, who are gang raped; an event that mercifully occurs off-camera.) Angela is nothing if not determined, however, and she risks her life to send surreptitious messages to the French. For awhile it appears that her onetime lover Karl has turned into a beast no better than his comrades, drunkenly attacking Angela in a darkened room before he recognizes her. Ultimately, however, at Angela's behest, he denounces the Kaiser's cause, defies his commanding officers, and throws in his lot with the Allies. After more suspenseful adventures the duo escape together, and when Karl is captured by French troops, Angela is able to get him a reprieve.Not so surprisingly, the film's original ending upset contemporary audiences. After such graphic demonstrations of German depravity it didn't seem right that Mary would wind up with a German lover, even a "reformed" one. An alternate ending was filmed in which she winds up with the Frenchman instead, but it appears that this footage has not survived.The Little American is a fascinating record of a grim chapter in world history, but it's a difficult viewing experience. I'm a silent film buff and historically-minded, and yet I felt queasy and depressed by the time it was over. I couldn't help but recall that this sort of incendiary propaganda was so prevalent during the Great War that it caused Americans to be skeptical twenty years later when stories of Nazi atrocities began to reach these shores. DeMille, Pickford, Griffith, and their Hollywood colleagues harnessed the cinema in the service of militant nationalism, and the techniques they pioneered have been refined into ever-more sophisticated forms ever since. Not a happy thought, is it?