"Ramona" is a 1910 American short drama film starring Mary Pickford, directed by D. W. Griffith, based on Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel Ramona. Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel had served as a pioneering effort in developing sympathy among mainstream Americans for the plight of the Native American, despite its trappings of tragic, nineteenth-century romance and melodrama. In boiling down the 26 chapters of Jackson's novel to the single reel Biograph film, Griffith and Stanner E. V. Taylor created an adaptation that still requires some familiarity with the source for the viewer to fully digest its action.
Although this film is full of fine visual touches -- some excellent deep-focus shots of the characters with the distant mountains behind them dominate the camera-work --and has good performances by Mary Pickford in the title role and a slightly over-the-top performance by Henry Walthall, there is far too much solitary posing and the two reels are too brief for the story. There are some stunning vistas to behold in this on location shoot in Ventura County CA. as the outcasts retreat to the perceived freedom of the great outdoors. The story is compressed into two reels, which is probably just as well considering the limitations imposed on it by silent screen techniques and title cards that attempt to tell too much in too little time.
• Mary Pickford - Ramona
• Henry B. Walthall - Alessandro
• Francis J. Grandon - Felipe
• Kate Bruce - The Mother
• W. Chrystie Miller - The Priest
• Dorothy Bernard
• Gertrude Claire - Woman in west
• Robert Harron
• Dell Henderson - Man at burial
• Mae Marsh
• Frank Opperman - Ranch hand
• Anthony O'Sullivan - Ranch hand
• Jack Pickford - A boy
• Mack Sennett - White exploiter
Resources: wikipedia.org, imdb.org
New soundtrack and dubbing: HandyCinema
Music: Kevin Mac Leod (www.incompetch.com) licensed under Creative Commons licence http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-... . Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
