The movie's set was created by one of the great unheralded art directors of the silent era, Harry Oliver. The Grimes farmstead is a masterpiece of design. The buildings are made of rough-hewn planks and worm-eaten wood. Spanish moss hangs on all the surrounding trees. The ground is all dirt and mud with no grass anywhere in sight, except for the weedy muck at the swamp's fringe. To top it off, a huge pit bull dog stands guard over the children. This environment is captured on film by the work of three separate cinematographers: Charles Rosher, Hal Mohr, and Karl Struss. This triumvirate represented some of the finest photographers of the silent era. Struss and Rosher shared the first Best Cinematography Academy Award for their work on F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927). Later, Mohr would win Oscars for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and Phantom of the Opera (1943). (And Rosher won a second Oscar for The Yearling in 1946.) This was one of the most talented groups of cinematographers to ever work together. In Sparrows, they help to enforce the farmstead's oppressive atmosphere. In the barn, where the children live, the camera emphasizes the ceilings and walls and thus reinforces the constraints upon the children.

As the children move past the base of a tree, the camera shows us alligators snapping at them, seamlessly incorporating the children and the alligators into the same shot. This camera shot has long generated arguments about how it was actually created. Mary Pickford herself added to the confusion by telling a story about her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, visiting the set and becoming enraged when he saw the dangerous conditions that his wife was working under. However, film historian Booton Henderson helped dispel the mystery when he coaxed the secret out of Hal Mohr: the alligators were filmed first with the top half of the film masked out. An animal handler tossed meat to the alligators so they would snap and thrash. Two days later, Pickford and the children were filmed as she led the children past the same tree where the alligators were filmed. The director (William Beaudine) shouted instructions to her about where to stumble, increasing the illusion of danger.

With such excellent set design and cinematography, the presence of Mary Pickford almost seems secondary. This was her last role as a child. Pickford plays a character supposedly sixteen years old. While actually 32 at the time, Mary is completely convincing as a teenager. She cares for the younger orphans like a mother. In a horribly heart-wrenching scene, she cares for a seriously ill infant in a scene guaranteed to extract tears from mothers everywhere. Pickford's role in Sparrows served as a transition to the adult roles that soon followed. But audiences didn't really accept Mary as an adult. Or rather, whatever was unique about Mary didn't make the transition when she assumed adult roles. She won an Academy Award for her performance in Coquette in 1929; but audiences weren't impressed. In 1933, Mary retired from filmmaking.

Sparrows stands as arguably her greatest achievement. It's an amazing film that all lovers of silent cinema should be familiar with. This new DVD from Milestone Film & Video and Image Entertainment also contains two Mary Pickford shorts--"Wilful Peggy" (1912) and "The Mender of Nets" (1910), both directed by D.W. Griffith for the Biograph Company, where Pickford worked for as little as $40 a week. By 1916, she was making $10,000 a week (plus a $300,000 signing bonus) at Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Company. For people who think Mary only played children characters throughout her career, look no further than these two films. In "Wilfil Peggy," for example, she plays a vixen who runs off ("In the spirit of deviltry," the title cards tell us) on her wedding night with another man. It seems she prefers the local bar over the uppercrust wedding reception offered by her well-to-do husband.

The DVD contains no other extras than the two shorts, but the video transfer for Sparrows was culled from an amazingly well-preserved 35mm print. In addition, Gaylord Carter provides an effective score on organ.