Another "lost" film found! 'Hulda from Holland' surfaced in Czechoslovakia's National Film Archive, in Prague, in 2001. The original credits and intertitles are missing, as are several insert shots of handwritten letters and a telegram, all replaced with Czech text. Under the guidance of Hugh Munro Neely, the Mary Pickford Institute have supplied new English translations of the Czech titles; sadly, these read like translations from Czech, and are surely very different from the original Famous Players intertitles. Many individual frames are deteriorated. The actual 'meet cute' moment — when John Bowers finds Pickford in his rooms — has survived in this print, but the sequence that sets this up, bringing Pickford into Bowers's rooms, is indeed lost. I wish that this print had lost a disgusting and unneeded sequence in which the youngest Dutch boy wallows in jam.
SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. Mary Pickford, got up here in a woodenshoe Katrinka costume like the Old Dutch Cleanser logo, is a Netherlands orphan raising her three younger brothers, who look like the Dutch Boy Paints logo. All four have blatant patches on their cozzies so we'll know they're paupers. The boys have no distinct personalities, and the youngest is disgustingly twee ... or just disgusting, full stop. (This story would have worked better with only two younger brothers, or even one.) All four travel to New York City, where she meets Bowers and they fall in love.
The plot suffers from two separate coincidences, both of them jumbo deluxe. Bowers gives a good performance, but his character is that annoying cliché: the scion of a wealthy family who is offered a solid position in the family firm yet prefers to starve as a sensitive bohemian ... in this case, drawing pictures of kittens. I've encountered this trope in dozens of stories and scripts, yet I've never accepted it as real. Can't this guy seek the muse at weekends while earning a good living the rest of the week? This time round, for once, the artist eventually decides to work for his wealthy father after all.
Mary Pickford, playing here a more mature version of her 'Little Mary' character, gives a much better performance than this script deserves. She has several excellent pantomime set-pieces, and performs them with subtlety and grace.
The film benefits from some excellent New York City location shots (including one of Pickford's stand-in encountering the Statue of Liberty) and some good period details. A shop advertises prime rib for 12 cents a pound. When a street accident occurs, the policeman must summon aid by going into a nearby drugstore to make a phone call.
The early scenes set in Holland feature stereotypical costumes, with a windmill that I could have sworn was fake. (I've now been told by Hugh Neely that this is an authentic windmill near Bridgehampton, NY.) There's no particular reason why the heroine had to be from Holland, nor even an immigrant. This being a silent movie, the issue of Dutch girl Hulda's ability to communicate with New Yorkers is never raised.
There's an unpleasant and unnecessary scene featuring an unsupervised goat that dies from poisoning. (The poor kid had no nanny.)
This is one of those movies in which the railway tycoons urgently covet some poor farmer's land. For once, this plot gimmick is resolved intelligently. Apparently in this case there's no law of eminent domain to force the sale. There's some originality in 'Hulda from Holland' but also two very long coincidences, some clichés, and that disgusting little boy. Mary Pickford's excellent performance, well-supported by John Bowers, raises this movie to 6 out of 10.
SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. Mary Pickford, got up here in a woodenshoe Katrinka costume like the Old Dutch Cleanser logo, is a Netherlands orphan raising her three younger brothers, who look like the Dutch Boy Paints logo. All four have blatant patches on their cozzies so we'll know they're paupers. The boys have no distinct personalities, and the youngest is disgustingly twee ... or just disgusting, full stop. (This story would have worked better with only two younger brothers, or even one.) All four travel to New York City, where she meets Bowers and they fall in love.
The plot suffers from two separate coincidences, both of them jumbo deluxe. Bowers gives a good performance, but his character is that annoying cliché: the scion of a wealthy family who is offered a solid position in the family firm yet prefers to starve as a sensitive bohemian ... in this case, drawing pictures of kittens. I've encountered this trope in dozens of stories and scripts, yet I've never accepted it as real. Can't this guy seek the muse at weekends while earning a good living the rest of the week? This time round, for once, the artist eventually decides to work for his wealthy father after all.
Mary Pickford, playing here a more mature version of her 'Little Mary' character, gives a much better performance than this script deserves. She has several excellent pantomime set-pieces, and performs them with subtlety and grace.
The film benefits from some excellent New York City location shots (including one of Pickford's stand-in encountering the Statue of Liberty) and some good period details. A shop advertises prime rib for 12 cents a pound. When a street accident occurs, the policeman must summon aid by going into a nearby drugstore to make a phone call.
The early scenes set in Holland feature stereotypical costumes, with a windmill that I could have sworn was fake. (I've now been told by Hugh Neely that this is an authentic windmill near Bridgehampton, NY.) There's no particular reason why the heroine had to be from Holland, nor even an immigrant. This being a silent movie, the issue of Dutch girl Hulda's ability to communicate with New Yorkers is never raised.
There's an unpleasant and unnecessary scene featuring an unsupervised goat that dies from poisoning. (The poor kid had no nanny.)
This is one of those movies in which the railway tycoons urgently covet some poor farmer's land. For once, this plot gimmick is resolved intelligently. Apparently in this case there's no law of eminent domain to force the sale. There's some originality in 'Hulda from Holland' but also two very long coincidences, some clichés, and that disgusting little boy. Mary Pickford's excellent performance, well-supported by John Bowers, raises this movie to 6 out of 10.