I can see how fans of Mary Pickford would appreciate "Secrets," as in some ways it's an appropriate farewell film that parallels her own career and life and is about the passing of time--a lifetime. It's not good, though, and seems rather derivative. As well as being an adaptation of a play that had already been made for the screen in 1924 by fellow silent-film star Norma Talmadge, its episodic lifespan plotting and romance of Manifest Destiny is similar to other films such as 1931 Best Picture "Cimarron." Both are turgid. Fortunately, Pickford, having somewhat embarrassed herself in the talkies beginning with her Oscar-awarded part in "Coquette" (1929), followed by "The Taming of the Shrew" (1929) and another Talmadge remake "Kiki" (1931), gives one last dignified performance here. It also helps that sound synchronization technology had improved, and that co-star Leslie Howard is more Rhett Butler than Ashley Wilkes this outing.
The film is broken into three distinct acts and an epilogue, with montages to transition between them and to represent the passing of time. The first part has the 40-years-old Pickford playing a character who is likely half her age or younger (ditto co-star Leslie Howard, but not so many seem to care about men's ages). Thankfully, Pickford manages to pull it off better than she did in "Coquette" and other late films in her career where she continued to play young parts. Moreover, Pickford fans will be used to her playing parts much younger than herself, as with the help of screenwriter Frances Marion, who also penned this adaptation, Pickford became "America's Sweetheart" with childhood roles such as in "The Poor Little Rich Girl" (1917). Moreover, the first act is my favorite because of its light and comedic treatment--a rom-com of its day. There's some cutesy flirtation between Pickford and Howard, which is partly portrayed by pantomime with a light musical score--playing to Pickford's strengths. Mary wears some ridiculously extravagant and wide hoop or elliptical Victorian-era dresses, two of which Leslie helps her get in and out of in a humorous scene. The biggest drawback of the first act, methinks, is its stereotyping of New Englanders as stuffy, with Mary running away from a forced engagement with a monocle-wearing fop, who's much like her father. Although, this does provide the film's best eye-rolling line, of "There's nothing quite so enduring to a man as a wee bit of ankle," and it sets up the film's underlying Manifest Destiny doctrine and romanticizing of the rugged West.
Things take a turn for the worse in the second act, as melodrama enters in the form of a battle with cattle rustlers, although it still features a good shootout sequence and the best shot of Mary in the film, as she walks through a burning doorway while carrying her dead baby. I wish "Secrets" had ended there. The short third act and epilogue are much worse, as the film shows Mary standing by her man as he's unfaithful and runs for public office. The other woman is a wretched movie cliché of a scorned, ambiguously-foreign Jezebel, and, given the later famous novel, it's unfortunate that she's named "Lolita." It also doesn't help that this twist of hubby's infidelities comes out of nowhere. Perhaps, much like Pickford's marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, who was also a reputed philanderer.
The Eastern penny farthing to wagons West and, eventually, to a car ride adventure plot is uninteresting, but the Western trajectory does slightly mirror Pickford's own life from the Broadway theatre and Biograph film studio in the East to founding Hollywood with the wild independent film producers (later to become the major studios) in California. Although this was her last film on screen, like her character in the last act of "Secrets," she continued to work behind the scenes, including as a producer, for the industry she helped create.
The film is broken into three distinct acts and an epilogue, with montages to transition between them and to represent the passing of time. The first part has the 40-years-old Pickford playing a character who is likely half her age or younger (ditto co-star Leslie Howard, but not so many seem to care about men's ages). Thankfully, Pickford manages to pull it off better than she did in "Coquette" and other late films in her career where she continued to play young parts. Moreover, Pickford fans will be used to her playing parts much younger than herself, as with the help of screenwriter Frances Marion, who also penned this adaptation, Pickford became "America's Sweetheart" with childhood roles such as in "The Poor Little Rich Girl" (1917). Moreover, the first act is my favorite because of its light and comedic treatment--a rom-com of its day. There's some cutesy flirtation between Pickford and Howard, which is partly portrayed by pantomime with a light musical score--playing to Pickford's strengths. Mary wears some ridiculously extravagant and wide hoop or elliptical Victorian-era dresses, two of which Leslie helps her get in and out of in a humorous scene. The biggest drawback of the first act, methinks, is its stereotyping of New Englanders as stuffy, with Mary running away from a forced engagement with a monocle-wearing fop, who's much like her father. Although, this does provide the film's best eye-rolling line, of "There's nothing quite so enduring to a man as a wee bit of ankle," and it sets up the film's underlying Manifest Destiny doctrine and romanticizing of the rugged West.
Things take a turn for the worse in the second act, as melodrama enters in the form of a battle with cattle rustlers, although it still features a good shootout sequence and the best shot of Mary in the film, as she walks through a burning doorway while carrying her dead baby. I wish "Secrets" had ended there. The short third act and epilogue are much worse, as the film shows Mary standing by her man as he's unfaithful and runs for public office. The other woman is a wretched movie cliché of a scorned, ambiguously-foreign Jezebel, and, given the later famous novel, it's unfortunate that she's named "Lolita." It also doesn't help that this twist of hubby's infidelities comes out of nowhere. Perhaps, much like Pickford's marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, who was also a reputed philanderer.
The Eastern penny farthing to wagons West and, eventually, to a car ride adventure plot is uninteresting, but the Western trajectory does slightly mirror Pickford's own life from the Broadway theatre and Biograph film studio in the East to founding Hollywood with the wild independent film producers (later to become the major studios) in California. Although this was her last film on screen, like her character in the last act of "Secrets," she continued to work behind the scenes, including as a producer, for the industry she helped create.