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Tess of the Storm Country

1922

MARY PICKFORD...with the sunny curls and tawdry tatters, the roguish smile, quaint impudence and splendid faith of the inimitable Tess.

Wealthy Elias Graves builds his home on the top of a hill, where a group of squatters have taken up residence at the bottom. Many of the men in the squatters' village have their eyes on young Tess, and one of them, Ben Letts, frames Tess's father for murder. While maintaining her father's innocence, Tess must keep her love for Graves' son a secret, while caring for Elias' daughter's illegitamate child.

Mary Pickford Lloyd Hughes Gloria Hope David Torrence Forrest Robinson Jean Hersholt Danny Hoy Robert Russell Gus Saville Madame De Bodamere Milton Berle Jeanne Carpenter Maxine Tabnac Mavis Villiers

Theatrical

12 Nov 1922

USANR

USA

12 Nov 1922

TheatricalNR

118 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Sol ★★★★

Tess of the Storm Country is a melodrama directed by John S. Robertson. It is based on the novel of the same name by Grace Miller White.

Tess Skinner is seventeen years old and the daughter of a squatter. Elias Graves is the owner of the land and therefore quite rich. He is trying to get rid of them and the other squatter families, which becomes an obsession as he notices the resistance of the people.
The sons of Graves, Frederick and Teola are in a difficult position, especially Teola, who fears his father, since she is in love with Dan Jordan, a law student, and she is also pregnant with his son for which they must marry soon. So…
Review by Josh Whiting ★★★½

Watched as part of the Film School Drop Outs – Weekly Challenge 2018
Week 1 - Actors - Mary Pickford (Filmography)
I don’t generally pick movies based on actors, and I’d never seen Mary Pickford in anything before (or even heard of her before to be honest), so this was a good expanding challenge for me. I had no particular expectations for this topic so I just searched around YouTube for a silent movie that would fit the criteria, and this was the first one I happened upon.
This turns out to be a 1922 remake of a film Pickford first did in 1914 with a different director and co-stars. A title card at the beginning of the film includes…
Review by Nitrate_Diet ★★★

Pickford's bounding energy is the main attraction in this drawn-out silent melodrama. The story is unwieldy and her character's motivations becomes increasingly difficult to parse.
Initially, it's a story about the haves on the top of the hill and the have nots at the bottom. The rich father is controlling, greedy, and abusive. Lest we think it a new phenomenon, the movies have been critiquing the rich and powerful on screen for a hundred years.
It predictably becomes a story about the blossoming romance between a wealthy guy and a poor girl. When the girl's father is arrested and wrongly accused of a crime, the story feels like it's building to a climax. But instead, he's left in prison for…
Review by David Mattatall ★★½

Getting street harassed by a rake you step on is such a good bit, it's crazy. Doing it while on a mission to steal a pie from a rich guys house makes it all the more so.
Pickford is fun (so too is the 2nd female lead, Gloria Hope) but this movie is Soo old timey it feels like it's from the 1700s or something.
Review by Evan English ★★★½

I’ve had it with hearing about squatter’s rights ! I think it’s time we discuss squatter’s wrongs.
Review by 𝟏𝟓𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 ★★★½

You know you’re in for a fun time when your leading lady is introduced sleeping in a boat.
Mary Pickford reprises her role as Tess from the 1914 film, and she’s by far the highlight of both versions. She’s a deeply sympathetic lead, but she can also dance and jump and kick people. She gets picked up and chucked across the room, then she gets back up again. It’s all in service to Tess’s character, too, even the opening titles touch on how much she loved playing that role. She’s seriously one of the greats.
If you ever need a case study on how quickly modern editing techniques developed, the 1914 and 1922 adaptations of Tess of the Storm Country are decent examples.…
Review by Luka ★★★½

Mary Pickford remaking her own movie from 1914 which I haven't seen yet, so I can't compare, but this is definitely one of her very best performances. I guess I tend to say that pretty often (it's hard not to, when she's so consistently great), but there really were so many pure Pickford moments here. Other than that I wasn't particularly blown away by the story, but it does have enough complications to remain engaging throughout most of the relatively long runtime.
Review by Mark Whitney ★★★½

This was the second time Mary Pickford made this movie. She had been in a version eight years earlier, directed by Edwin Porter, of whom she said "knew nothing about directing. Nothing." But, as noted by Pickford herself in one of the title cards at the beginning, she made this one, an improved one, because " of all the characters I have portrayed, Tess is the one I have most loved."
So this movie is good. Really good, actually. Maybe not in every way, as there are things to pick apart here, but as movies from this era go, it was much more involved and complex. The story, which goes for almost a full two hours, would have been resolved…
Review by Andrew Ford ★★★

1922
Much more polished and accomplished version of the 1914 film which was one of Pickford's first big hits. The melodrama is fairly tired at this point, but the performances are strong all around, and there are some stunning shots of the night sky in this thing.
Even though it's longer and more polished than its predecessor, this still feels like a relic from a different era for the most part. But, then again, that's very nearly true of performers like Pickford already at this point (although Fairbanks, by contrast, seems to be peaking).
Review by Brian Stack ★★

It's so steadfastly old-fashioned, it feels older than it is

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Where to watch

Tess of the Storm Country

Synopsis

MARY PICKFORD...with the sunny curls and tawdry tatters, the roguish smile, quaint impudence and splendid faith of the inimitable Tess.

Cast

Director

Producer

Writers

Original Writer

Cinematography

Assistant Director

Art Direction

Studios

Country

Language

Genres

Releases by Date

Theatrical

12 Nov 1922

Releases by Country

USA

12 Nov 1922

Popular reviews

Where to watch

Tess of the Storm Country

Synopsis

MARY PICKFORD...with the sunny curls and tawdry tatters, the roguish smile, quaint impudence and splendid faith of the inimitable Tess.

Cast

Director Director

Producer Producer

Writers Writers

Original Writer Original Writer

Cinematography Cinematography

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Art Direction Art Direction

Studios

Country

Language

Genres

Theatrical

12 Nov 1922

USA

12 Nov 1922

Popular reviews

Director

Producer

Writers

Original Writer

Cinematography

Assistant Director

Art Direction