Cheap Amarilly of Clothesline Alley (DVD) (Marshall Neilan) Price

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Customer Reviews of Amarilly of Clothesline Alley

Heavenly Mary
What a darling angelic screen presence Mary Pickford was!! And today, almost a century later, she still shines as bright. Our Mary manages to be both a spitfire and a angel in a way no other actress from any era could match (and indeed, in this crude era with talentless, tacky starlets you won't be seeing any Mary Pickford types back on the screen anytime soon.) AMARILLY is one of the best of the two dozen or so Pickford films I have seen - she has a wonderful star "entrance" in the film where an unseen woman is cleaning a window - as she wipes it clean we see through the glass plate it's our girl MP. I've always considered Mary Pickford the best comedienne of the silent screen and this little gem had me laughing like it was a Chaplin or Keaton film. Mary was arguably the very first romantic comedy movie star - love is the theme of many of her movies and this movie is no exception, one of her most charming romance films. The print is quite nice though a few scenes are sadly imperfect. As a wonderful bonus, the video includes one of Mary's early one-reelers, 1911's "THE DREAM" in which Mary plays the wife of a cheating drunkard who in one drunken sleep imagines the tables turned (with our Little Mary smoking and knocking down booze!!). This little short is as good as the feature!

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I dream of Mary
Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley is a good silent film and is indispensable for Mary Pickford fans. That said, it does not rise to the heights of, for example, Stella Maris or Daddy Long Legs. Somehow, Amarilly lacks the drama or the emotion of Pickford's very best films. It is a sort of Pygmalion story with poor girl Amarilly taken in by a rich admirer and his family, who try to change her. The rich are portrayed as either dissolute in their youthful excess or, if older, hypocritical and interfering in their attempts at charity. This is similar to the point that Griffith makes in his criticism of the charitable motives of do-gooders in the modern part of Intolerance.

The life of the poor in Clothes-Line Alley is shown to be hard. Amarilly is unjustly fired for something that is not her fault. Living conditions are overcrowded and the food is simple at best. Even the seedy side of life is hinted at when a group of young men decide to visit an establishment which is obviously a brothel. Where will Amarilly's future lie? In answering this question, whether she will join the rich or remain with the poor, the film tells a story which is frequently funny, sometimes touching and constantly entertaining.

The colour-tinted print which is used for this DVD is in good condition. It is faded in places and there are some scratches, but this damage is so minimal that it does not interfere with the viewer's enjoyment of the film. The score fits in well with the film's action and the period in which the story is set. It adds a great deal to the atmosphere of the various scenes and is memorable without being intrusive.

Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley is only 67 minutes long, but the DVD has a wonderful bonus feature. It includes a short film called The Dream. This film, first released in early 1911 by The Independent Moving Pictures Company, was made by Thomas Ince who would go on to make the classic anti-war film Civilization in 1916. The Dream stars Mary Pickford as a married woman who is having trouble with her drunken and unfaithful husband. She is delightful in this film and the film itself packs so much into its one reel that it is easy to begin to appreciate the lost art of the one-reeler.

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A silent gem!
This is a terrific film from the silent era! Mary Pickford stars as Amarilly, a feisty young woman who works and lives in a poverty stricken neighborhood. One evening she brings home a socialite, played by the handsome Norman Kerry, who was injured in a dancehall fight. He takes a liking to her and tries to introduce Amarilly and her family to his upper class world, with disastrous, but funny results. This is a terrific film that fans of Mary Pickford old and new, are sure to enjoy! Also included is a film short from 1911 called "The Dream". Another good Mary Pickford film to see is "My Best Girl" (1927).