Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2013 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

A Little Princess (1917)

Based on the novel Sara Crewe by Frances Hodgson Burnett, this Mary Pickford vehicle is another of her early ‘poor little rich girl’ films that silent era audiences loved. Norman Kerry and ZaSu Pitts support.

This edition of A Little Princess (1917) is included as supplementary material to a documentary on writer Frances Marion. The film is presented in a full-frame video transfer which runs at slightly faster than natural speed, and with windowboxed still-frame titles on the majority of main titles and intertitles. The entire presentation could well be a video-only compilation of the best surviving elements.

The source print is generally in very-good condition but a little contrasty, with plugged-up shadows and some featureless highlights, and some sections of higher amounts of speckling and emulsion scuffing. Some shots (of the exterior of the palace, for instance) are out-and-out blurry.

The film is accompanied by a piano score.

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