Alice, a little newsgirl known as "Sticks", spends her time fighting for her territory against a lot of tough kids. When Sticks witnesses an attack upon her favorite customer, the wealthy young James Morgan, she tries to defend him and, as a result, they are both knocked unconscious by the thugs and thrown on a baggage car.
Douglas Bronston
United States
Sticks and Morgan’s soot-smudged odyssey feels less like a nickelodeon plot and more like a half-remembered fever dream you once had about your own abandoned childhoods. There is a moment—brief, almost subliminal—when the baggage-car door yawns open and moonlight knives across Ethel Ritchie’s profile, revealing not th...
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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.
Sherwood MacDonald
Sherwood MacDonald
Community
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" Sticks and Morgan’s soot-smudged odyssey feels less like a nickelodeon plot and more like a half-remembered fever dream you once had about your own abandoned childhoods. There is a moment—brief, almost subliminal—when the baggage-car door yawns open and moonlight knives across Ethel Ritchie’s profile, revealing not the tomboy newsie but the trembling child underneath. Douglas Bronston’s script, normally content to sprint from incident to incident, suddenly inhales; the camera, starved for light..."
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