Tess of the Storm Country might be seen as the archetypal Mary Pickford film. Pickford plays Tessibel Skinner, a dirt-poor fisherman's daughter living with a community of squatters in ramshackle huts by the water's edge. Tess was reportedly one of Pickford's favorite roles (both in this 1922 version and in an earlier one, shot in 1914), and it shows. She brings a sparkling energy to her performance. Dressed in rags, her hair a frazzled mop, she creates an indelible character. ("The more ragged and dirty I look, the better I can play," declared Pickford in a 1914 Photoplay Magazine interview.) Every man in squatter town has eyes for the beautiful, fearless Tess, from brutish Ben Letts (Jean Hersholt) to pathetic Ezra Longman (Danny Hoy). But Tess's heart belongs to her sweet daddy (Forrest Robinson). High on a hill above these indigent folk dwells the wealthy Graves family. Father Elias (David Torrence) considers the squatters a stench in his nostrils and tries to evict them; son Frederick (Lloyd Hughes) sympathizes with them and falls in love with Tess; daughter Teola (Gloria Hope) finds her life becoming inextricably bound with Tess's, in ways neither girl could have imagined.
Like so many films in which Mary Pickford appears, Tess of the Storm Country pits rich against poor. In the microcosm of this movie, the rich are steeped in moral turpitude; it takes poor, pure-hearted Tess to, in the words of a chastened Elias Graves, teach them the true "meaning of Christianity." This densely plotted picture also takes on such weighty themes as murder, perjury, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, suicide, and attempted rape. A rousing melodrama, the film draws the viewer right in and doesn't let go until its riveting climax. --Laura Mirsky
