Name: Just Around the Corner
Genre: Drama
Released: 1921-12-11
Duration: 1 h 10 min
Rating: 6.1
Cast: Margaret Seddon, Lewis Sargent, Sigrid Holmquist

Frances Marion delivers a finely-rendered melodrama

Frances Marion was perhaps the greatest screenwriter in early Hollywood, and on two occasions also directed her scripts. Her first time at the helm, for the Mary Pickford vehicle "The Love Light," resulted in a beautiful looking but badly paced film, ironically better directed than scripted.

Her second second directorial effort, "Just Around the Corner" (1921) is definitely a stronger film. Like its predecessor, it benefits from a vivid sense of place, this time the tenements of New York, and again boasts superb cinematography by Henry Cronjager. Two cast members from "The Love Light" reappear in "Corner": Eddie Phillips is the bad boyfriend and Fred Thomson is "The Real Man." In common with the earlier film, there's also a scene of the young heroine trying to imitate the mannerisms of a woman of the world.

This time Marion wasn't working from an original narrative; instead she adapted a short story by Fannie Hurst, concerning an elderly mother with two teenage kids. The mother wants her daughter to escape the precarity of working class life by finding a worthwhile husband. The daughter finds a boyfriend, but he can't even be bothered to meet her ailing mother, who wants to be sure her girl is in good hands before she pops off the twig...

The first section of the film, before the plot wheels start churning, is the strongest and follows the characters through the routines of working class life and sibling squabbles and the problems of finding (and enduring) decent work. There's a standout section of the daughter working in sweatshop that provides artificial flowers for women's hats. The lighting, which streams in from the window and back-lights the daughter, is beautiful in its sharp clarity. But that same light sharply illuminates the drudgery of the other women, with their worn hands and faces, and the brutal features of the male overseer who exploits them.

Sigrid Holmquist resembles Janet Gaynor and is sweet and convincing as the innocent daughter. I was delighted to find the brother played by Lewis Sargent, cinema's greatest Huck Finn (in the 1920 film directed by William Desmond Taylor). After he reached adulthood Hollywood didn't know what to do with this fine, spirited actor, who possessed a stray dog face and equal aptitude for serious drama and clowning. Margaret Seddon, as the mother, is stuck playing a sentimental archetype rather than a real human being. She has little do to beyond looking pained and saintly. The film drifts into overwrought melodrama by turning the mother's compulsion to meet her daughter's boyfriend into a life or death issue (mother seems to have the power of selecting the exact minute of her demise!), with an overlong, overwrought sickbed scene.

The film's real pleasures are outside its plot, in its views of a snowed-under New York, the tenement stairs and alleyways, the grimy dance-halls and pool parlors, and in the scenes of the brother and sister squabbling, the mother fretting over the daughter's taking an usherette job (scandalous night work!), or the worthless boyfriend exploiting everyone he meets. "Just Around the Corner" also reflects the limited career options for a woman in such a milieu, and its imagery and power of setting compensate for its overdose of mother-love melodrama.

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

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Just Around the Corner

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