When this one-reel Biograph comedy was made its star, Mary Pickford, had been acting in movies for less than a year, and yet she'd already appeared in dozens of short films. From the first moments of The Trick That Failed her aptitude for screen acting (and for quickly garnering audience sympathy) is apparent. Pickford had one of the most nuanced, "readable" faces of the silent era: we always know exactly what she's thinking and how she feels. Here Mary plays an artist struggling to sell her paintings, but no one is buying. Her dealer is a formidable-looking gent with a bushy mustache, and when she approaches him with a new canvas we get a vivid sense of her nervous apprehension; when the man wheels on her, she flinches. The dealer refuses to take any more of her paintings because her work isn't selling, and she's crushed. She returns home, and we see that her household larder is down to a few crackers and a sip of milk.
Although her circumstances look bleak, Mary has two suitors. One is a handsome, wealthy young gentleman, while the other is a grotesque looking old guy who resembles a low-comedy clown. (Speaking of low comedy, Mack Sennett is on hand here in a supporting role as the gentleman's butler; it would be three more years before he would leave Biograph, turn producer and found Keystone.) The young man proposes to Mary but she turns him down, saying that she would prefer to become a success on her own before marrying. Later he gets an idea: he'll send his servants to the art dealer's gallery with money, buy up her paintings, and thus bring about Mary's success in a hurry. Normally I wouldn't want to give away the ending, but, as the title makes clear, the gentleman's scheme doesn't work out the way he expected.
Despite a rather bizarre and mystifying closing gag The Trick That Failed is a cute little comedy. I particularly liked the way Mary conveys her poverty, early on, when she pulls the milk bottle out of the ice box, notes how little she has left, quaffs it, savors the taste, and then follows it up with crackers, the last ones in the box. The punch line comes later, after her paintings have inexplicably begun to sell like crazy. Now prosperous, Mary returns home with several bottles of milk and a dozen boxes of crackers! Pickford, like Chaplin, could take simple concepts such as this and turn them into comedy gold.
Although her circumstances look bleak, Mary has two suitors. One is a handsome, wealthy young gentleman, while the other is a grotesque looking old guy who resembles a low-comedy clown. (Speaking of low comedy, Mack Sennett is on hand here in a supporting role as the gentleman's butler; it would be three more years before he would leave Biograph, turn producer and found Keystone.) The young man proposes to Mary but she turns him down, saying that she would prefer to become a success on her own before marrying. Later he gets an idea: he'll send his servants to the art dealer's gallery with money, buy up her paintings, and thus bring about Mary's success in a hurry. Normally I wouldn't want to give away the ending, but, as the title makes clear, the gentleman's scheme doesn't work out the way he expected.
Despite a rather bizarre and mystifying closing gag The Trick That Failed is a cute little comedy. I particularly liked the way Mary conveys her poverty, early on, when she pulls the milk bottle out of the ice box, notes how little she has left, quaffs it, savors the taste, and then follows it up with crackers, the last ones in the box. The punch line comes later, after her paintings have inexplicably begun to sell like crazy. Now prosperous, Mary returns home with several bottles of milk and a dozen boxes of crackers! Pickford, like Chaplin, could take simple concepts such as this and turn them into comedy gold.
