A Kiss from Mary Pickford
About A Kiss from Mary Pickford
Goga Palkin takes tickets at a cinema and loves Dusya Galkina, a beginner actress. She wants someone famous, on the order of Douglas Fairbanks, and tells Goga she will have him only if he becomes one. He meets Mary Pickford. She kisses him on the cheek. He becomes a local celebrity, and girls chase him through the streets. Dusya gets jealous and then wants him.
Cast & crew
More about A Kiss from Mary Pickford
Sergei Komarov directed, co-wrote the script with Vadim Shershenevich, and is credited as cinematographer. Mezhrabpom-Rus released it on 9 September 1927. It is six reels, with Russian intertitles. Igor Ilyinsky plays Goga. Anel Sudakevich plays Dusya. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks play themselves, in footage shot during their 1926 visit to the USSR. A legend says they did not know the shots would be used in a fiction film. Eileen Whitfield and Jay Leyda report that the couple took part on purpose, as a gesture to the Russian industry.
Themes
Background
Pickford and Fairbanks were in the Soviet Union in 1926. The film uses that visit as the thing that makes a ticket-taker famous.
Making
Komarov built a comedy around a real kiss Pickford gave during the 1926 visit, then put Ilyinsky's ticket-taker in the middle of the crowd that follows.
Look
Sergei Komarov is credited with the photography as well as the direction, including the street chase after the kiss.
Preservation
A print survives at the Library of Congress.
Notes
- The Russian title is Поцелуй Мэри Пикфорд.
- Vera Malinovskaya is billed among the leads without a part named in the English sources.
- A print is preserved at the Library of Congress.
- The film was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 1991 and at the Castro Theatre in the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's winter program in February 2009.
Scenes
- Pickford kisses Goga on the cheek.
- Girls run after him through the streets once the kiss is news.
- Dusya, who had held out for a star, changes her mind.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927).webm)
