Love Light,The

Starring Mary Pickford and Fred Thomson. Chamber score composed by Maria Newman. Collector's edition, digitally mastered from the original 35mm material. A presentation of the Mary Pickford Foundation and Timeline Films.

This rarely seen film directed by legendary screenwriter Frances Marion ( Stella Maris, The Wind, Camille) provided Mary Pickford with one of her most fully realized adult characters. Angela (Pickford) tends a lighthouse in an Italian fishing village while her brothers are fighting at the front. She discovers a foreign sailor washed ashore, nurses him back to health and falls in love with him. After they marry and have a baby, she discovers that he is German spy and that her innocent actions have helped cause the death of her brother. Pickford shows her astonishing range: from pure slapstick, to moments of pathos, to a harrowing descent into madness.

Marion, an Oscar-winning screenwriter, was described by author Adela Rogers St. John as "the most brilliant, versatile and accomplished person in Hollywood." Her work on The Love Light with long-time friend Pickford and husband (and future cowboy star) Fred Thomson showed Hollywood that she could also hold her own behind the camera. The film is beautifully atmospheric, gorgeously shot and deeply moving.

See also from Milestone: Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood