"A Child of the Paris Streets" (1916), though directed by Lloyd Ingraham, plays very much as if it had been directed by D. W. Griffith on a bad night. Starring both Mae Marsh and Robert Harron, both of whom Griffith shaped into having careers, it also stars Tully Marshall, Jennie Lee, Carl Stockdale, Loyola O'Connor, Josephine Crowell, Bert Hadley, and others. Stockdale is a stern Parisian judge and sentences Apache gang member Bert Hadley to prison for his crimes, and there he dies. Angered and wanting revenge, his mother, leader of the Apache gang, kidnaps Stockdale's very young daughter (probably only a year or so old) and raises her as one of their own. The young girl is Mae Marsh, and she becomes more adept than all of the others at her "profession". Eventually, after doing a dance on stage in a club, she sits and is noticed by an artist and patron of the club, Chicago born Robert Harron who finds her attractive and a fine dancer. Both become enamored of each other. From here the audience will immediately see the plot's future. Will she escape the Apache gang's hold on her and her life? Will Harron win her in the end? Will Carl Stockdale "re-gain" his daughter? One thing I'll say that is a hint: the fact that Robert Harron is an artist will play into the dénouement.
Everything about this film was obvious. The acting had so many of the same physical tropes used by these actors in Griffith's short films in which they began that it was annoying to me, though perhaps it would not annoy most viewers. Mae Marsh had a habit of squeezing her fists together and shaking them in front of her face. It drives me crazy! Harron gets an air of brush-off ease at times, even during intense moments, and it makes me UNeasy. Anyway. Obviousness aside, the film is fine. It's an interesting plot nevertheless, even though we know the outcome. Getting there only takes about 50 minutes. However - there are several places where there is missing footage. At the end of reels it's obvious that a lot of film is no longer there or in poor condition. Several spots show nitrate deterioration. My print is the Alpha release which is 16mm and in fair condition at its best and poor in some parts. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to have seen it, but wish I could see a much better print. I'd watch again. The photography had some merit; the costumes were fascinating: Jennie Lee's costumes reminded me constantly of the 1935 costumes on the poor peasant women in "A Tale of Two Cities", the time of which had occurred more than a century before the action of this film; still, the costuming was good. The film couldn't have cost much to make, but it played as if it might have been originally thought to be of a possibility of a much greater budget and overall film.
Lloyd Ingraham, the director, began as an actor (and at the age of 38!) in film with Broncho Billy Anderson in Westerns, and he made several of those films. Indeed, he made a huge number of Westerns over the course of his career. By 1916 he'd already made over 100 films. Then his course turned toward directing in a major way. He spent nearly a decade exclusively making films as a director. Then he returned to acting, character acting of the type that IMDb calls "fatherly". He appeared overall in over 300 films as an actor, and he directed over 100 films. So, the man was a minor part of Hollywood's greatness for nearly 40 years. Mae Marsh began on the top, but she still remained a part of Hollywood for her more than 40 years, though she was a very minor character actress by the end. Still, she's remembered with great fondness by Griffith aficionados, and many remember her for her appearances in later John Ford films, too. Robert Harron died young of a gunshot wound, possibly self-inflicted, possibly an accident.
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