The Dream is an early Mary Pickford one-reeler (today known as a short) that was believed to have been lost but was found and restored in the 1990’s. I had always mistakenly assumed that Pickford always played young girls or virginal young women; however in her early career she often played a housewife as she does here. She was then 18 years old. By 1912 she was the first internationally known movie star and she would later become the first woman in the history of the United States to earn a million dollars in one year. She didn’t actually play a child until 1917 when she made The Poor Little Rich Girl at the age of 24. Audiences loved it so much that “America’s Sweetheart” would be forever stereotyped as a grown woman playing a child.
The Dream is a simple story with only a few sets and two outdoor shots. A loutish husband spends a night on the town while his faithful wife waits patiently at home. He returns drunk and treats her callously before falling asleep and dreaming. He dreams that his wife is a drinker and smoker and she goes out on the town and flirts with other men. He cannot handle this and so he decides to shoot himself. As soon as he pulls the trigger, he of course wakes up, and will now be kinder to his wife.
Pickford must have loved the scene she gets to play in her husband’s dream. She wears a fancy dress that gives her an hour glass figure, a stylish hat with a feather, and she gets to act rather brazen by swilling alcohol, smoking a cigarette and behaving aggressively. The husband (Owen Moore), for his part, overacts horribly in his dramatic moment before he attempts suicide. I guess that was the style then.
The story is simple but I appreciated how easy it was to follow. Some early silent movies are rather confusing with their lack of subtitles, jerky camera work, and sloppy editing. The Dream is interesting in that Mary Pickford hadn’t yet found her iconic look with her head of long golden curls; still her talent and screen-presence are undeniable.
