From my favorite movies..

Crappy film

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

M'Liss is the quintessential feisty, self-sufficient adolescent girl, that Mary Pickford naturally played the best. This story is about a bold and sassy girl, more mother than daughter to her alcoholic father, who is killed leaving the girl to fend for herself. M'Liss is also an amusing parody on Westerns, with the brazen girl holding up stagecoaches with a slingshot and romping around the countryside like a wildcat. Theodore Roberts is adorable as her drunken father , with his sole asset Hidegarde, the chicken he guards so lovingly as her eggs are traded for whiskey. All the supporting actors are very good in their roles. I especially enjoyed Charles Ogle, as Yuba Bill who cares for M'Liss in a fatherly fashion. Mary plays M'Liss with her usual combination of charm and pluckiness. There is a scene in the film in which M'Liss carries a snake into a classroom, causing some turmoil. Pickford found out later that the scene, which was not in the script, was a result of a bet between director Mickey Neilan and the crew. Neilan came up with the idea of working a snake into the story and the crew told him Mary would never agree. He laid a bet, and he won. All the exterior scenes were filmed very artistically on location, near Boulder Creek in Northern California, by the outstanding cinematographer Walter Stradling. Though not considered one of Pickford's best films, M'Liss is still very enjoyable to watch.

"M'Liss" is a pleasant, if pointless, Marry Pickford vehicle. In it, the then-26-year-old played a mischievous teenage mountain girl who sports a slingshot. Mary often played child roles, but it's somewhat unseemly here considering that little time elapses between her character placing a doll in a coffin and grave to her and her schoolmaster falling in love. Today's audiences might also find it interesting to see in the film a public classroom where Bible stories appear to be the main curriculum (and Mary is amusing playing the skeptic)."M'Liss" is a mostly breezy and light film, but it would've benefited from further shortening, namely in the plentiful number of title cards. Scenarist Frances Marion deserved much credit for helping to launch Mary's stardom and typecasting her in child roles, beginning with "The Poor Little Rich Girl", and Marion is one of the most important screenwriters in film history, but in the silent era, she sometimes had the vice of talking too much. The subplot of inheritance from a rich relative, which helps tack on a happy ending, was also unnecessary.

It may not be Pickford's best movie, but it's definitely her cutest. I can't help but be a little biased, however: I always felt that her melodramas were a little too dated, and the ones that really last are these scantily plotted, silly comedies that don't take themselves too seriously.It's priceless to see her "hold up" a stagecoach with a sling shot, or wonder what "-??-" means when put between "none of your" and "business." (They already showed a willingness to print "damn," so that narrows it down.)The inter titles are funny, although in a silent film they don't have to be, and the supporting characters are just as fun to watch as Mary. It's on the "Heart o' the Hills" DVD that came out in '05 as only a special feature, but it's the more enjoyable of the two.

This story boasts a fine silent film star cast, including Pickford, Meighan, and Blue, and the screenplay by Frances Marion has funny moments and title cards to go along with the story of a backwards girl fighting to save the local innocent schoolteacher from being convicted for the murder of her father.I loved the moment where Pickford confronts Meighan about the murder. Their faces are close together through the bars of the jail cell and they communicate with eyes and facial gestures alone (no title cards) so that we know what is transpiring between them without a word needing to be said. Beautiful. Meighan had such a strong masculine face, no wonder why he was so popular in the silent days as a leading man and why all the actresses loved to work with him.At times the story seems rambling, but half-way through it becomes very cohesive and you really learn to care for these characters and their fate.