Secrets (1933)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Expected more

Am I Missing Something?

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Pickford's screen swan song is her best talkie, admittedly not a high bar, that moves at breakneck speed through its tale of the romance, marriage, struggles and ultimate success of its main couple. It crams too much into its 83 minute running time but as early sound films go it's not bad.At 42 she's unconvincing as a young belle at the beginning of the film but after about ten minutes she's out of that guise and from then on her performance is quite good. Unsurprisingly her strongest moments, as well as the film's, are the one's without dialog. It gives a peek at why she was one of the queens of silents and it seems regretful that just as she was adjusting to sound she chose to withdraw. The film wasn't a hit on release and Mary, nothing if not canny, sensed that though the parade had not passed her by as of yet it was just around the corner. So she retired, enormously wealthy and a power broker behind the scenes.

This in 1933 was Mary Pickford's last movie though she would not have known it at the time. Historically this is a particularly special movie for Mary's personal life.Mary used this movie to make a statement to her husband Doublas Fairbanks (they were separated at this time and seemingly finished as the intense and deeply passionate couple they were). She at this time was telling Douglas Fairbanks she could forgive his meanderings and in fact the tenor of the whole movie is also about these sorts of choices.Mary was in fact seemingly desperate to get back together with Douglas. I think Mary chose this movie because it spoke to her current marital problems with Fairbanks.Douglas Fairbanks responded to Mary in his last movie in 1934 - appropriately in the role of Don Juan in 'The Private Life of Don Juan'. His response - that he was tired, he needed to rest and to sleep. In real life Douglas Fairbanks in the end couldn't get Mary Pickford out of his heart and made a number of attempts to restart their relationships, but Mary had hardened her heart. And when eventually Mary did relent and decided she couldn't live without Douglas she was a few hours too late. Fairbanks in the end gave up, resolved himself that Mary wouldn't come back and booked himself on an overseas cruise. Mary sent him a message but it was too late, he had already left. And thus it was one of the great and passionate relationships of Hollywood finally died. It should not be under estimated how much these two loved each other. It was something neither got over for the rest of their lives.Secrets was an odd movie that apart from the message it directed at Douglas Fairbanks certainly show cased some of Mary's great skill at comedy and at evoking an emotional response from the audience not to mention the last we got to see some her acting habits that created an attachment between her and the viewer. Mary's acting has always been effortless, always natural with a natural tempo. A study of her movies through the years is a revelation. Lillian Gish always thought Pickford the greatest of all actors.Right from the beginning in 1909 Mary Pickford worked out and stated clearly many times that Stage Acting was NOT the way to act in moving pictures. Pickford pioneered method acting and the skill of silent acting, inventing a new type of acting for film, - where very subtle movements, gestures facial use and so forth had to be used to tell a story and engender emotion. She became the greatest and most skillful silent actor of all time. Revealing also are around 24 newspaper interviews she gave during her early and mid career that showed, that even the very young Mary Pickford made a very careful study of acting for the silver screen and her development of method acting. Even the teenage Pickford took the job extremely seriously. Another thing people viewing this movie must remember about 1933. Sound was still new to film and the film technology for it still very young and the means of recording actors still in it's development stage, sound quality was not very good. In Mary's movie Coquette, her first talkie, sound microphones were stationary. Actors couldn't speak until they were in proper range of the microphone which created all sorts of problems and curiosities in the earliest talkies. They would speak their line, remain silent until the moved to the next designated spot where a fixed mike was and speak their lines and so on. Mary's other talkie Kiki wasn't a success at the time, though now it is thoroughly entertaining and in some parts great fun and one of the funniest comedic dance scenes you will run across in movies.The success of Mary Pickford's talkie movies wasn't about Mary but what the public wanted Mary to do. She went in to totally different and unfamiliar roles. But one has to understand what was going on in Mary's life at this very time. She lost her deepest love and closest friend, her mother, which caused her to cut her hair for the first time every - totally changing her image and to reassess her life. She was devastated. Her other family members sister and brother were also in great troubles through alcoholism and sickness and of course she was having trouble with her husband. On top of this her studio UA needed to put out movies to make some money, this being the Great Depression, and Chaplin wasn't pulling his weight at the time. Pickford was under huge emotional, family and business pressures at this time.Pickford never decided to make this her last movie - it just turned out that way as other business and family pressures kept her too busy and eventually she thought not to bother with it anymore - wrongly thinking that her popularity had gone past its use by date.In this movie the comedic undressing scene bespeaks the effortless grace, timing and organizational skill of Pickford. The death of the baby silent scene fittingly gives us one last glimpse of the great actress.It was a pity that Pickford never returned, she still had much to give and all the skill in the world to apply. Her acting was as good as anybody and probably would have reached its great heights again.The main reason Mary Pickford never made movies again one feels, despite all the other reasons, is the loss of Douglas Fairbanks. If these two had reconciled, rejoined, it is inevitable their great passion and love of life would have seen Mary back in movies, instead this time being a great pioneer of the talking movies. Her career in acting spanned from the age of 5 when she traveled by train day after day, year after year, learning her trade.

I love Mary Pickford films and would list many of them among my very favorite silents. She was magnificent in gems such as DADDY LONG LEGS, SUDS, SPARROWS and MY BEST GIRL and is perhaps my favorite silent actress. However, I am NOT a "Kool-Aid drinker"--you know, a person that loves a star so much that I can't objectively review their films. This is the type person that gives every single one of the movies scores like 9 or 10! And, when I looked at the overall score for this (7.4) and some amazingly positive reviews, I knew I was in the land of Kool-Aid!The bottom line is that the talkies were not kind to Miss Pickford. Even though she received an Oscar for COQUETTE, she clearly didn't earn it for that performance. The Oscar was more an acknowledgment of her past film achievements. However, by 1933, it was obvious that America's Sweetheart was no longer a guaranteed box office draw and SECRETS fell flat in theaters. However, its failure wasn't due to Pickford this time as much as it was due to a terribly dull and episodic plot. Her acting here was actually better than COQUETTE, as at least she was believable and didn't put on a crazy accent--though she was rather old to play such a young girl. At 41, she played a woman who was probably about 16 at the beginning of the film--though she did a great job of making it all seem possible and this really didn't hurt the film.The movie seems very much like an Edna Ferber novel (such as CIMARRON)--a sweeping saga that is so grand and so bigger than life that the characters seem more like caricatures than real people. In particular, Leslie Howard comes off as rather wooden and tough to understand--especially since his personality in the film changes so wildly and unpredictably. In spite of this, Pickford stood by her man like Tammy Wynette and this hurts her character as well--making her seem like a sad door mat late in the film.The plot involves rich Easterners Pickford and Howard eloping and going West in the mid-nineteenth century. Pickford came from a rich family and gave up everything for her love. Once they arrive, life is hard but the film is engaging...for a while. The segment where they fight against cattle thieves and they lose their baby is reasonably well done and engaging--and none of the rest of the film is anything like it!! After this decent segment, the final half of the film is more like watching a highlights reel--with only very short snippets shown of various decades until the pair become old and decrepit. Amazingly, although this is dull and unsatisfying, the writers manage to make it worse by sticking in some pointless sexual peccadilloes that manage to make you wonder why you even care about the characters any more. The film would have been MUCH better had it stuck to a much briefer time span or if they'd filmed it as a series of two or three films. Shoving all this into 131 minutes was just impossible.The bottom line is that this film is a huge disappointment to fans and will do nothing to make those not in love with Pickford care a bit about her. Despite decent acting on her part, her character seems a bit desperate and stupid and her husband, Leslie Howard does an unconvincing job playing a human weasel! Don't bother with the film unless you are a die-hard fan or if you want to see Ned Sparks in one of his better supporting roles.

Mary Pickford's farewell to the screen was this film Secrets which seems like a cut rate version of Cimarron with a little bit of pre-Code infidelity thrown in. Whole chunks of the film I viewed tonight seem to have been edited out unfortunately and the viewer has to piece together what is missing.I will say that Pickford did give a good performance in her farewell film, she ages quite nicely from the young ingénue she normally plays all the way up to being a little old lady, a queen of Washington society besides.Her leading man in Secrets is Leslie Howard, an earnest young fellow in the employ of her father C. Aubrey Smith who's arranging a marriage with a stuffy English title in a suit. Mary's got eyes only for Howard though and they elope with proper ladder and all right out from under the noses of Smith, mother Blanche Fredirici, and the empty suit title Herbert Evans.Smith has the power to make sure Howard's name is mud in New England so Howard and Pickford go west by wagon train the way Yancey and Sabra Cravat do in Cimarron. Leslie Howard's as much not home on the range as he was in The Petrified Forest. But he does have grit and so does she. There's also a question of infidelity which would not have gotten by the Code in a couple of years. It reflects the real life marital problems that Pickford was having right about then with her storybook marriage to Douglas Fairbanks ending. On screen Howard is having a fling with Mona Maris and he mentions there've been others. Still Mary stands by her man, unlike in real life.One should see Secrets for no other reason than seeing Ned Sparks in the role of sidekick to Howard. He's less home on the range than Leslie. Who'd have thought both their screen credits would include a western or semi-western as the case may be.The way the musical score was played during the film it was very reminiscent of silent films. Probably something Mary Pickford arranged as she was the producer as well.Secrets is not a great film, though the stars perform more than adequately. It was too old fashioned for public taste when it was released in 1933, let alone now.