Judith Rosenberg on Piano

Gaynor's last collaboration with Borzage finds her once again playing opposite Charles Farrell in a melancholy melodrama about an embattled couple whose love for each other overcomes all odds. Set largely in a rural village, Lucky Star features Gaynor as an impoverished, willful young woman enamored of Farrell's disabled World War I veteran. The misty, fairytale milieu, fabricated entirely inside the studio, is rendered in Borzage's trademark chiaroscuro lighting and soft-focus camera style. American Gothic in its most sincere form, the film entwines sentimental optimism with touches of terror, pathos, and humor. Originally released with short sequences of spoken dialogue and sound effects, Lucky Star was technically a hybrid work, a picture poised on the transition point between the mature silent cinema and the nascent talkie boom. With no known prints in existence, the film was long considered “lost” to history until an intact nitrate copy (minus any sound elements) was rediscovered and restored by the Netherlands Filmmuseum.