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The saccharine prospect is at once deflated, the eponymous orphan imitates a yodeling passerby at a fountain and gets headbutted by a goat for her trouble. Heidi (Shirley Temple) in the Black Forest, gulping fearfully as Grandfather (Jean Hersholt) carries an oversized knife around the cabin. Actually, her guileless presence soon thaws the crabby hermit, who ventures into the local church for the first time in years. Forcibly brought to the "great noisy cage" of Frankfurt by her grasping aunt (Mady Christians), the tyke finds herself setting an ailing heiress (Marcia Mae Jones) back on her feet while vexing a dour governess (Mary Nash). Broken dolls and monkeyshines and sleigh chases follow. "Feuds and weeds grow quickly here," notes a blind Oma (Helen Westley). A grim storybook visualized with exemplary lightness by Allan Dwan, plus a lesson in how to deftly handle a studio's monster of cuteness. (Tickled by the protesting bleats of the barnyard critter she's struggling to milk, Temple experiences the single flash of spontaneity in her career.) Nothing like a capuchin monkey on a chandelier to alleviate the pain of separation, escaping from the mansion means sliding down a banister to avoid the creaking staircase. "Hmm, quite a personage under that extraordinary hat." Low angles on Alpine heights for a child's consciousness, a camera craning up to the heroine's improvised hayloft bed and tracking across a backlot evocation of a snowy burg to "Silent Night." Arthur Treacher's curtsy lesson, "In Our Little Wooden Shoes" à la Renoir (La Petite Marchande d'allumettes), Hersholt's Santa Claus malentendu. "What a wonderful story! What is it about?" Driftwood refines the formulation. With Pauline Moore, Sidney Blackmer, Thomas Beck, Delmar Watson, Egon Brecher, George Humbert, and Sig Ruman. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |