Lucky Star

Tim works on the lines. He goes to the war and comes back unable to use his legs. He shuts himself in a house at the edge of the village and busies himself with repairs. Mary is the daughter of a poor family; she sells milk, and before the war Tim caught her in a lie. They meet again and she begins coming to the house regularly. But her mother has another plan: to marry her to a healthy man with money who has come back to the village. Frank Borzage directs. Janet Gaynor plays Mary and Charles Farrell plays Tim. Gaynor and Farrell were the best known pairing of the period and made several films with Borzage; this is the last of those three. The film's fate is unusual. It was considered lost for years, with no print to be found. In 1990 a copy turned up in an archive in the Netherlands, and it could be shown again after sixty years. Borzage's approach is plain here: poverty and disability are shown realistically, while the film is built on a feeling that goes past them, and the tone never slides into asking for pity. It belongs to the last years of the silent period, made during the change to sound, and a version with sound was prepared as well. The closing section takes place in snow and is physically hard to believe; the narrative uses it as an emotional peak. Who it is for: viewers who like silent cinema and classic Hollywood melodrama. Who it is not for: the emotional register is high, the narrative is simple, and it is demanding for a viewer unused to the rhythm of silent films.