Min and Bill

Marie Dressler was past sixty, a vaudeville clown written off for a decade, and this won her the Oscar. She earns it in a part that is half brawl, half lullaby. Min runs a dockside rooming house, drinks with Wallace Beery’s fisherman Bill and throws the furniture at him when he deserves it, which is often. The comedy is real and loud, and then the film turns, without warning, into a story about what a poor woman will do for a child’s chances. Watch Dressler’s face at the end, on the dock in the crowd: the film gives her no line, and she needs none.