Silent Movie Day: The Love Light

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Silent Movie Day(opens in a new tab) was created as an annual celebration of silent motion pictures, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive has participated every year to exalt these films as a vital, beautiful and powerful cinematic art form. Since so much of our silent cinema heritage has been lost forever, we are proud to join with hundreds of like-minded archives, venues and festivals all over the world each year to advocate for their presentation and preservation.

Silent filmmaking was extremely sophisticated by the 1920s, and many of the great directors of this era expressed their ideas primarily through the use of pictorial elements to create visually fantastic and memorable images (cinematography and screenwriting students study silent film for this very reason today). Women played an essential role in the industry, making up to 50% of the studio workforce before 1930. A significant number of the highest paid directors, actors and screenwriters were women, and many had their own production companies that allowed them expansive creative freedom.

At its inaugural UCLA Festival of Preservation in 1988, the UCLA Film & Television Archive premiered their photochemical restoration of Mary Pickford’s The Love Light to an ecstatic audience. The film had not been seen in its entirety for many years and parts of the original negatives had disintegrated. The restoration was produced by combining portions of original American and European release prints and negatives, much of these coming from the Mary Pickford Foundation Collection.

In 2021, 100 years after the release of The Love Light, the UCLA Film & Television Archive partnered with the Mary Pickford Foundation to scan this preservation element in 4K as the basis for the current digital restoration. All subsequent work — including DRS, color grading, tinting and vari-speeding — were employed and completed at Roundabout Entertainment. Thanks to these efforts, this newly restored version of The Love Light has been returned to the original beauty of its initial 1921 release presentation with a new orchestral score commissioned by the Foundation.—Steven K. Hill

The Love Light

U.S., 1921

The Love Light story was conceived by legendary screenwriter Frances Marion for her friend and frequent collaborator, Mary Pickford, during her Italian honeymoon with her chaplain-turned-actor husband Fred Thompson. Pickford insisted that not only would Marion write The Love Light, but she would also direct the eight-reel production as well. Pickford herself used the film to break away from the juvenile roles that had made her famous, and she shines as Angela, a young Italian woman maintaining a lighthouse while her brothers fight in World War I. Betrayed by a German spy (Thompson), and beset by tragedy, Angela must overcome a heartbreaking deception to find love and ultimate redemption.

DCP, b&w and tinted, silent with music soundtrack, 89 min.