The Brat

press release:

USA | 1931 | 35mm | 67 min.

Director: John Ford

Cast: Sally O’Neil, Alan Dinehart, Frank Albertson

A Park Avenue novelist (Dinehart) fishes a street urchin (O’Neil) out of a Lower East Side night court to serve as a model for a character in his new book. The resurrection of this small but engaging social comedy, restored by The Museum of Modern Art from the sole surviving original element—a badly damaged nitrate print—means that all of Ford’s extant sound films have been returned to circulation. Among the film's memorable moments is an evidently authentic pitched battle between the tiny O’Neil and the patrician Virginia Cherrill (the blind flower girl of Chaplin’s City Lights) that could be the kinkiest passage in Ford’s oeuvre.

Fox Restorations from MoMA: In our first series tribute to the magnificent archival library and preservation efforts of the Department of Film at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, we proudly present seven hard-to-see cinematic gems from Fox Films. These lovely entertainments, produced in the first years of the talkies before Fox merged with 20th Century Films, include pre-code comedies and thrillers, a musical, and a Western. Our lineup includes work by pantheon auteurs like John Ford and Raoul Walsh, but also directors who deserve to be better known like William K. Howard and William Dieterle. The series begins on Feb. 4 with an in-person appearance by the noted film critic Dave Kehr, who now serves as Adjunct Curator in MoMA’s Department of Film.

All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.