Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Little Orphant Annie (1918)

This late Selig production, directed by Colin Campbell, stars Colleen Moore and Tom Santschi, with support from Harry Lonsdale, Eugenie Besserer, Lafe McKee, and child actors Ben Alexander, Doris Baker, Lillian Wade, Billy Jacobs and George Hupp.

With her mother suddenly dying while Annie is still a little girl, Annie grows up in an orphanage where she entertains the other children with her stories of witches and goblins who swoop down on bad little children to carry them off far away to throw them into frog-infested swamps and into boiling cauldrons. Annie’s strong imagination and story-telling skill creates for the children images of goblins surrounding them. As Annie gets older, a lost uncle is now forced to take her into his home and he mightily resents the responsibility. When she is being abused by her uncle, a neighboring farmer intervenes on Annie’s behalf and Annie immediately sees the farmer as her knight in shining armor. Witness to her continuing abuse, an elderly couple decides to take Annie into their home where they already care for a number of adopted children. Once again, Annie delights in sharing her stories with her new family.

Young Colleen Moore lifts this otherwise pedestrian production with her charming performance as Annie. Tom Santschi is given little to do but Harry Lonsdale and Eugenie Besserer stand-out as Annie’s mean uncle and aunt.

Somewhat technically sophisticated for its time, the film contains early examples of seamless split-screen shots, a moving camera dolly shot (still novel in American films of the mid-1910s), and a number of multiple exposure shots.

The film’s production may have begun in 1916 and continued into 1917, but the film was not released until 1918 as Selig Polyscope production activity was winding down. The film may have been intended by Selig to be the first of several films based on James Whitcomb Riley’s stories and poems, as the ending of the film is left rather open-ended.

— Carl Bennett

This dual-format edition has been mastered from a digital restoration of the film that utilized an incomplete and decomposing 35mm nitrate print and a number of 16mm reduction prints. This edition restores approximately five minutes to the film (not seen in other home video editions) and adds color-tinting. The film has been scanned at a frame rate that renders a natural-looking speed to movement. Image stabilization has been performed on the scanned materials, and there is very-good exposure balancing and geometry matching between shots taken from the varying source materials. The resulting image quality ranges from very-good to good.

While we had no problems with the Blu-ray Disc in the set, we did have playback problems in the fifth reel of the film with the DVD included in this set, having tested it in four different disc players. We have heard that other collectors have not encountered similar problems with their DVD discs from this edition.

The film is accompanied by a music score performed on piano by Ben Model. As usual, Model offers a fine performance that appropriately captures the tone of the film’s story.

The supplementary features includes audio commentary by author Jeff Codori on Moore and the history of the film; audio commentary by edition producer Eric Grayson and Glory-June Greiff on the restoration and the background of poet James Whitcomb Riley; a video presentation by Eric Grayson on the restoration of the film with video taken at the premiere of the restored version; Glory-June Greiff reads “Little Orphant Annie” and excerpts from “Where is Mary Alice Smith?”, both of which are referenced in the film; and a 16-page booklet with pictures and additional information on the film.

This is our recommended home video edition of this film, which may never look any better given the deterioration of some of the source elements.

USA: Click logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc / NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is presented with a music score performed by Blaine Gale.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .