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Rating: 
Summary: One of Mary's Best
Review: Better than most of Pickford's other feature film roles, Amarilly shows one of her best qualities on screen: she has an ability to create a facial expression that perfectly seals the comic moment. Just look at the way she winks to her mother before confronting her beaux (not the FACT that she winks, but the WAY she winks), or her expression (and body language) as she makes the ice cream-and-pickles remark.
I can't tell if the ending was meant to be melodrama or a spoof of a melodrama, but it's wacky enough and unexpected enough to work on both levels. I couldn't help but smile, even if that wasn't the film's intended effect.
This isn't a must see, but if you like silent movies you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: I dream of Mary
Review: Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley is a good silent film and is indispensable for Mary Pickford fans. That said, it does not rise to the heights of, for example, Stella Maris or Daddy Long Legs. Somehow, Amarilly lacks the drama or the emotion of Pickford's very best films. It is a sort of Pygmalion story with poor girl Amarilly taken in by a rich admirer and his family, who try to change her. The rich are portrayed as either dissolute in their youthful excess or, if older, hypocritical and interfering in their attempts at charity. This is similar to the point that Griffith makes in his criticism of the charitable motives of do-gooders in the modern part of Intolerance. The life of the poor in Clothes-Line Alley is shown to be hard. Amarilly is unjustly fired for something that is not her fault. Living conditions are overcrowded and the food is simple at best. Even the seedy side of life is hinted at when a group of young men decide to visit an establishment which is obviously a brothel. Where will Amarilly's future lie? In answering this question, whether she will join the rich or remain with the poor, the film tells a story which is frequently funny, sometimes touching and constantly entertaining. The colour-tinted print which is used for this DVD is in good condition. It is faded in places and there are some scratches, but this damage is so minimal that it does not interfere with the viewer's enjoyment of the film. The score fits in well with the film's action and the period in which the story is set. It adds a great deal to the atmosphere of the various scenes and is memorable without being intrusive. Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley is only 67 minutes long, but the DVD has a wonderful bonus feature. It includes a short film called The Dream. This film, first released in early 1911 by The Independent Moving Pictures Company, was made by Thomas Ince who would go on to make the classic anti-war film Civilization in 1916. The Dream stars Mary Pickford as a married woman who is having trouble with her drunken and unfaithful husband. She is delightful in this film and the film itself packs so much into its one reel that it is easy to begin to appreciate the lost art of the one-reeler.
Rating: 
Summary: A silent gem!
Review: This is a terrific film from the silent era! Mary Pickford stars as Amarilly, a feisty young woman who works and lives in a poverty stricken neighborhood. One evening she brings home a socialite, played by the handsome Norman Kerry, who was injured in a dancehall fight. He takes a liking to her and tries to introduce Amarilly and her family to his upper class world, with disastrous, but funny results. This is a terrific film that fans of Mary Pickford old and new, are sure to enjoy! Also included is a film short from 1911 called "The Dream". Another good Mary Pickford film to see is "My Best Girl" (1927).
Rating:
Summary: Mary Pickford is winsome and adorable
Review: This was my first opportunity to see a complete film of Mary Pickford's, and its not difficult at all to see why she was considered "America's Sweetheart". She's a delight - sweet and lovable, but not at all syrupy or coy, with one of the most charming smiles imaginable. This 1918 comedy holds up rather well, with the necessary allowances for changing times and mores. Mary's a working-class Irish girl with a washer-woman ma and 5 rambunctious younger brothers. She's been seeing her equally working-class bartender boyfriend for 3 years, without even a kiss (like I said, she must have had a lot of charm to manage that!), but gets involved with dashing upper-crust sculptor Norman Kerry (who's handsome even to modern eyes). No surprises, it all ends well, but there are many cute and charming moments along the way, and the film flows together quite nicely given its age.
Rating:
Summary: Heavenly Mary
Review: What a darling angelic screen presence Mary Pickford was!! And today, almost a century later, she still shines as bright. Our Mary manages to be both a spitfire and a angel in a way no other actress from any era could match (and indeed, in this crude era with talentless, tacky starlets you won't be seeing any Mary Pickford types back on the screen anytime soon.) AMARILLY is one of the best of the two dozen or so Pickford films I have seen - she has a wonderful star "entrance" in the film where an unseen woman is cleaning a window - as she wipes it clean we see through the glass plate it's our girl MP. I've always considered Mary Pickford the best comedienne of the silent screen and this little gem had me laughing like it was a Chaplin or Keaton film. Mary was arguably the very first romantic comedy movie star - love is the theme of many of her movies and this movie is no exception, one of her most charming romance films. The print is quite nice though a few scenes are sadly imperfect. As a wonderful bonus, the video includes one of Mary's early one-reelers, 1911's "THE DREAM" in which Mary plays the wife of a cheating drunkard who in one drunken sleep imagines the tables turned (with our Little Mary smoking and knocking down booze!!). This little short is as good as the feature!
Rating:
Summary: Heavenly Mary
Review: What a darling angelic screen presence Mary Pickford was!! And today, almost a century later, she still shines as bright. Our Mary manages to be both a spitfire and a angel in a way no other actress from any era could match (and indeed, in this crude era with talentless, tacky starlets you won't be seeing any Mary Pickford types back on the screen anytime soon.) AMARILLY is one of the best of the two dozen or so Pickford films I have seen - she has a wonderful star "entrance" in the film where an unseen woman is cleaning a window - as she wipes it clean we see through the glass plate it's our girl MP. I've always considered Mary Pickford the best comedienne of the silent screen and this little gem had me laughing like it was a Chaplin or Keaton film. Mary was arguably the very first romantic comedy movie star - love is the theme of many of her movies and this movie is no exception, one of her most charming romance films. The print is quite nice though a few scenes are sadly imperfect. As a wonderful bonus, the video includes one of Mary's early one-reelers, 1911's "THE DREAM" in which Mary plays the wife of a cheating drunkard who in one drunken sleep imagines the tables turned (with our Little Mary smoking and knocking down booze!!). This little short is as good as the feature!
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