Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies (2008)

(On Cable TV, November 2019) It’s never too late to go back and document the earliest days of Hollywood, as Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies shows with a hagiography dedicated to one of the foremost actresses of the silent and early-talkie era. Considering the slight footprint that Pickford left in the sound era, it’s easy to overlook her star status throughout the 1910s and the 1920s—she was very much the first fan favourite, the first movie star. But it’s what happened after her screen acting retirement that’s perhaps more interesting, as she moved into the production side of movies and helped create United Artists, becoming the first movie studio executive along the way. All of this (and more) is brought forth through talking heads, restored archival footage of the film and cleaned-up audio of various interviews given throughout her life. The Muse of the Movies is, in keeping with most movie biographies, clearly a hagiography of sorts: Pickford doesn’t make bad decisions in this film, and it’s entirely dedicated to the creation of a portrait of Pickford as a film pioneer, nuance forgotten along the way. Still, even knowing this, there’s a lot to like here about someone often forgotten in modern times.