Little Annie Rooney Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.5

Little Annie Rooney Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 9, 2022

Stars of yesteryear are often thought of as monolithic enterprises in a way, permanently established in whatever firmament exists for such beings, but the fact is even those names which have entered the ranks of "the immortals" often had to experience career ups and downs. In that regard, Little Annie Rooney served as something of a comeback vehicle for Mary Pickford, who had starred in at least a couple of less than well received films before reversing her fortunes with this production, which became a gigantic hit and helped solidify the Pickford persona as a scrappy waif. What's kind of interesting about this particular scrappy waif, though, might be her surname, since there is a rather fascinating subtext in Little Annie Rooney of what was then the relatively early immigrant experience of various Irish people, living in decrepit tenements where at least some of the children appear to be on the feral side. That said, there's an absolutely loving presence to a lot of the depictions here, and the emphasis on family is especially notable.

Annie Rooney (Mary Pickford) is a tomboy who gives as good as she gets with some of the neighborhood feuds that break out. The "opposing clan" to Annie's gaggle is called the Kid Kellys, and they make their disparagement of Annie known through both graffiti (see screenshot 2 for one hilarious example) as well as other behaviors like throwing garbage. Perhaps surprisingly, then, Annie's father is a beat cop (Walter James) and Annie's older brother Tim (Gordon Griffith) is "working" with a bunch of older Kelly gang members. Some of the havoc created by the kids actually leads to some losses in assets by local vendors, and that then sets a variety of plot mechanics in motion.

There's a rather bracing feeling of just how untamed tenement living could be, in what might be termed the Wild East. There's also some significant emotional content in this film, despite what probably come off today as dated stereotypes and cartoonish characterizations. This film helped cement the image of Mary Pickford, for better or worse, and it's not hard to understand why, as the story is both humorous and moving.

Little Annie Rooney Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Little Annie Rooney is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VCI Entertainment and Flicker Alley with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.32:1. In terms of the rather odd mash up of VCI Entertainment and Flicker Alley, I'm not quite sure what might have happened, but as I kind of tangentially alluded to in our Sparrows Blu-ray review, there might be some vagaries of licensing involved. While this shows up in such online databases as Amazon as a VCI release, and in fact VCI's distributor MVD Visual confirmed that they have it listed as a VCI release, this release, unlike Sparrows, shows no signs of any VCI branding, so that this is for all intents and purposes a Flicker Alley release (I'm wondering if maybe VCI is simply distributing remainders or something like that). With all of that out of the way, the back cover of this release states that it was "created from the original tinted nitrate print in Mary Pickford's personal collection at the Library of Congress" and was "preserved photochemically by the Academy Film Archive". The insert booklet goes into even more detail on the restoration, stating:

The fact that Little Annie Rooney exists today is a minor miracle. Over 80 percent of all silent film shave been "lost": a euphemism for films that were sold for a penny a foot, dumped into the ocean or simply allowed to rot in the can. Of those that do remain, few are complete or in good condition.

The process of restoring and scoring Little Annie Rooney took several years. The original tinted nitrate in Mary Pickford's personal collection at the Library of Congress, made from the camera negative in 19025, was brought to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences archive in Los Angeles.

The Academy Film Archive preserved the film photochemically, creating new 35mm preservation masters and prints. The preservation master was then scanned at 4K high definition so that the Mary Pickford Foundation, in cooperation with AMPAS, could create a digital version, evaluating the film frame by frame, removing dirt and other signs of deterioration to perfectly match the original nitrate tints and tones.

This is a beautiful restoration, though there is still quite a bit of damage that has made it through the gauntlet, with noticeable scratching and marring and intermittent but minor frame instability. The yellow tinting wasn't particularly to my liking, and I found overall detail levels to probably be marginally superior in the untinted sequences, though there is certainly still abundant fine detail in a lot of the yellow material, notably the frequent close-ups. There aren't a ton of opticals like dissolves or even things like irises. Grain looks naturally and resolves without any issues.

Little Annie Rooney Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Little Annie Rooney features a new score by Andy Gladbach presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. It's commendable that Flicker Alley includes not just a featurette about Gladbach and the music on the disc, but also some great information in the typically nicely appointed insert booklet. Gladbach was selected for this assignment kind of coolly through a composition program at Pepperdine University, and his score was recorded by a 12 piece "orchestra". Some of the music may strike some ears as being at trifle too contemporary sounding, but I was really impressed by this young man's writing and orchestration abilities. The music sounds nicely full bodied and problem free and the surround track delivers some excellent spaciousness.

Little Annie Rooney Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Scoring Little Annie Rooney (HD; 5:18) is an interesting featurette with composer Andy Gladbach, who looks to be all of about ten or so (I joke, but only maybe slightly) but who nonetheless has the good sense to have "Bach" in his surname.

Little Annie Rooney Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This may be a Flicker Alley release or a VCI Entertainment release, but one way or the other, it's a really superior release from a technical standpoint and for its historical importance. The brief interview with Gladbach is appealing, as is the good information in the insert booklet. Highly recommended.