Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is Mary Pickford at her sunniest: a bright, talkative girl sent to live with strict aunts, who wins them over by being exactly herself.
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), directed by Marshall Neilan, is based on Kate Douglas Wiggin’s novel. Pickford plays Rebecca Randall, a girl from a poor family who goes to live with her aunts Miranda and Jane in Riverboro, where her energy, imagination and honesty clash with Miranda’s strict rules.
Pickford’s Rebecca is all movement and talk, and the film lets her be funny without making her a fool. She reads, she dreams, she gets into trouble, and she learns, and the audience follows her because Pickford makes Rebecca’s feelings, rather than her cuteness, the centre of every scene.
The film was a great popular success, and it remains a classic Pickford role: the spirited girl who changes a household, not by rebelling against it, but by bringing warmth into it.