Review of Mickey (1918) by Mike L — 06 Oct 2012

Mabel Normand is Mickey, at this point a young woman whose father has died and his best friend has raised her in a mining camp. Mickey is a tomboy causing trouble around the area, a settlement of wooden structures, mainly due to lack of a female role model other than a rather large Native American woman named Minnie.

Her caretaker sends her to a family of her relations, a group of sophisticates with more manners than money, who agree only if she works for them as a maid. As the movie plays out you realize that this is a story based on Cinderella, with the gold mine and an old boyfriend playing into the ending.

Mabel is not a beauty but she does have expressive eyes and she does the physical comedy required of silent films well. The film has some uneven pacing until the end which becomes enjoyably frantic and it does become somewhat confusing after the first 45 minutes due to the lack of written descriptions, editing, and many of the characters look the same.

It is an interesting movie as the humor is more subtle and lacks the slapstick of most from this time period.