Century Film Project

Celebrating the movies our ancestors loved

Tag: Gg

December 9, 2022

Georgetown Loop, Colorado

One of many “actualities” from the beginning of the twentieth century that offered to show America to Americans and the world, this movie reflects a rare opportunity to see the West in the movies before fantasy took over. Much longer than movies of only a few years ago, it remains simple in terms of technique and set up.

Georgetown Loop

The camera rushes along a mountain rail line, seeming to soar over forests and rivers, following the track across high bridges and below towering peaks. After a short distance, the train itself comes into view as it proceeds around a bend in the track. We can see the caboose, suggesting that the platform the camera is mounted upon is attached by a cable perhaps ten feet or more long, allowing a complete view of the train under certain circumstances. Seemingly all of the passengers in the rear cars are waving white handkerchiefs out the windows on the left side of the train, waving, as it were, at the audience. A conductor stands on the back of the final car and is especially vigorous and visible in his waving. Even when the passengers seem to tire of it, or when he has to lean dangerously far off the side to be seen, he keeps waving. At one point, the train goes underneath a trestle bridge while another train passes above, but the camera remains focused on the wavers. The terrain becomes rocky, the train barely missing boulders that have been blasted out to make way for the track, and the conductor is now hanging off the side in what seems a decidedly perilous manner as we go by a rail worker standing by the side of the tracks. Now a mountain village becomes visible, as the camera turns to pay more attention to the surroundings than the train. Houses loom up and we roll past warehouses and other commercial buildings. A church spire is visible in the distance. Still, whenever the train turns, we see the passengers endlessly waving, right up to the end of the film.

Georgetown Loop1

It’s interesting that someone thought seeing Coloradans wave would be more interesting than just looking out at a vista of Colorado. This may have been done to add “human interest,” or it may have been calculated to give the audience something more to focus on than just the scenery, which is all you usually get in a “panorama” film like this. It’s especially surprising to a modern audience when we glimpse the second train on the bridge above, only to lose sight of it and stay focused on the wavers. I suspect this is because the tripods used at the time didn’t allow for enough “tilt” to keep it in view as the train went underneath. The conductor seems to have been especially dedicated to the waving principle, we can sometimes see him glance over his shoulder to make sure he’s not the only one waving. His uniform is distinctive and similar to what would be seen in later years; we also see a woman in a heavy, non-revealing outfit with a large hat, pretty much the style in 1903.

Director: Unknown

Camera: Unknown. Some Internet sources claim Billy Bitzer, but this is not confirmed in his autobiography or any reliable source I can find.

Run Time: 3 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music)

 

 

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February 19, 2022

Gussle’s Day of Rest (1915)

This Mack Sennett “park comedy” stars Charlie Chaplin’s brother Sydney in a role about as close to the “Little Tramp” as possible. Although by 1915, Charlie had begun making more sympathetic movies about his character, Syd is still definitely in the earlier mode of funny-because-he’s-so-bad.

Gussles Day of Rest

The movie begins with Gussle (Syd) and his wife (Phyllis Allen) at the boardwalk, looking out into the ocean. A boy approaches Gussle and offers to sell him a newspaper. Gussle agrees, but has no money on him, so he cadges some from his wife. He sees that she keeps her change in a stocking, and sticks the end of it (the part with the coins) into his pocket, then uses a pair of scissors to snip off the part that is in her hand. When Nancy sees this, he tries to accuse the salesboy, but she is onto him. They then pass by a bar, and Gussle tries to go in, but wifey stops him. The go into a park, standing on the road, and squabble for a while until Gussle is suddenly hit from behind by a car and knocked over. The driver of that car (Slim Summerville) was distracted by his passenger (Cecile Arnold), and soon Gussle is, too. Now, Gussle and his wife squabble with Slim and Gussle pushes the car back with his foot a couple of times, causing it to careen wildly in reverse, but Slim drives back to the scene each time. Phyliis faints from all the exertion, but somehow manages to wake up to hit Gussle each time he shows too much interest in Cecile or takes a swig of the whiskey offered to help wake her up.

Gussles Day of Rest1

Gussle and Phyllis continue their day in the park, eventually snoozing under a tree together. Gussle wakes up first and blows cigar smoke into her open mouth, then puts a balloon in it. He distracts her when she awakes, annoyed, by calling her attention to the birds singing, then takes out a slingshot and starts trying to shoot them down. His aim is apparently poor, however; both he and his wife wind up getting a round in the eye when they return to earth. Slim and Cecile, meanwhile, have set up a picnic, which Gussle crashes, evidently with Cecile’s approval. Gussle somehow gets a fork stuck in his behind, which takes a good deal of effort on the part of Slim and Cecile to withdraw.

Gussles Day of Rest2

Annoyed by Gussle’s interloping, Slim tries to enlist the aid of Gussle’s wife, but she thinks he’s a masher when he wakes her up, and she knocks him down. Soon, Gussle and Slim are fighting, and Cecile takes a powder. Then Phyllis joins in and soon is fighting Cecile as well. Phyllis chases Gussle, who knocks a zookeeper into the pen with a leopard. This gives Gussle the good idea of doing the same thing with his wife, then going back to collect Cecile. A cop (Edward F. Cline) takes an interest, and Gussle sends Cecile away, then distracts him by sashaying around the well until he can hit him with his own billy club. With Phyllis and Slim in pursuit, Gussle puts Cecile in the car, but he can’t get it to start. Finally, it starts just in time to run over the cop, who hits Slim when he gets up again. The end is a high-speed chase with Gussle and Cecile in the car and the others on foot. Cecile’s gestures show us the car is out of control and Gussle swerves all over the road. They crash into a construction site where dynamite is being used, and an explosion dumps dirt all over the car. Gussle pokes his head out of the dirt, but there’s no sign of Cecile. He digs down until he finds her hair, then tugs at it and it comes off – revealing itself as a wig and the top of her head as bald. Gussle puts the wig back and pushes the dirt over it. The end.

Gussles Day of Rest3

It’s typical enough of the genre, but without whatever the magic was that made Charlie transcend it. Certain scenes, such as the cigar-smoke sequence and the fork in the behind, have the feeling of being ad-libbed comedy of the sort Charlie excelled at, but which just falls flat in Syd’s hands. There are more close-ups than you might expect for a 1915 movie, but the quality of the existing prints makes it hard to appreciate. Syd seems to play “innocent” a lot, fluttering his eyelashes and tilting his head to the side, but his cuteness doesn’t make up for the unlikability of his character. It was funny to spot Buster Keaton‘s future co-director, Edward Cline, in the role of the cop. Here, he’s a typical hot-headed Keystone Kop, which is kind of needed to distract us from Syd’s performance. Like a lot of two-reelers, the movie is divided into a “part one” and “part two,” but without any clear division between them. On the whole, it seems to me that cutting it down to a single reel would have been the best way to make it funnier.

Director: F. Richard Jones

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Sydney Chaplin, Phyllis Allen, Slim Summerville, Cecile Arnold, Edward F. Cline

Run Time: 20 Min, 30 secs

You can watch it for free: here (complete, with a terrible soundtrack), or here (incomplete, worse quality print, but better music).

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March 22, 2021

The Goat (1921)

Buster Keaton stars in and co-directs this two-reel short from his second year as a starring comedian. A simple premise once again leads to a lot of gags, and Keaton continues to demonstrate his developing abilities as a film maker.

The movie begins with an out-of-work Keaton getting into a bread line, but without noticing he stands behind two mannequins in front of a clothing store. The line moves up and all the bread is gone, but the two guys in front of him never move. When it threatens to rain, the proprietor moves his dummies inside, but Buster is too late to get any bread. Forlornly walking the streets, he looks into a barred window of one building, which happens to be a jail. The room he looks in upon is a mug shot room where the police are photographing one Dead Shot Dan (Malcolm St. Clair), a murderer. Seeing that the photographer is looking away, Dan moves his head to the side and snaps a picture of Buster without anybody noticing. Thus, when Dan escapes, the wanted posters all show Buster with his hands on the bars.

Shortly, and before anyone knows that Dan has escaped, Keaton gets himself in trouble with a patrolling policeman by throwing a horseshoe over his shoulder for luck, accidentally hitting the man in the face. Each time it looks as if he will get away, something happens, usually resulting in an additional officer getting knocked down and joining the chase. There are several clever gags in which Keaton jumps onto a vehicle, anticipating that it will pull away and save him, only to discover that he is being left behind somehow. At one point, he tries hiding behind a traffic cop, simulating his arm gestures until he walks away and Buster is exposed trying to direct traffic himself. He gets a brief reprieve when he lures the officers into the back of a truck and locks the door.

During this interval, he meets Virginia Fox, who is being hassled by a man on the street. Keaton defends her, and throws the man to the ground in a rather clever backflip move. Before he can introduce himself to Virginia, the truck delivers the policemen to the corner they are at, and Buster runs away again. After a few more false starts, he escapes by hopping onto a train going to a nearby town. Unfortunately for Buster, the town has heard of Dan’s escape, and newspapers and wanted posters with Buster’s picture are everywhere. The townspeople run from him in terror wherever he goes. Soon, he encounters the local police chief (Joe Roberts), who is the one man not afraid to face down Dead Shot Dan. The real Dan makes an attempt on his life, but is able to plant the gun on Buster, increasing his suspicions. He is able to escape the chief only by dumping a load of coal on him.

After making that escape, Buster runs into Virginia, pretending to be a man of means by stepping out of a taxi as he sees her approach, then scaring away the irate taxi driver by showing him a newspaper with him on the front cover. Virginia invites him to dinner and he goes up to her apartment to meet the parents. Of course, her dad is Joe Roberts. A new chase begins, involving the elevator in their apartment building and several rather silly gags involving the floor indicator. Virginia sides with Buster and the two of them escape together. Buster observes a sign outside a furniture store that says “You furnish the Girl, we furnish the home!” He carries his date into the store.

For me, this movie is something of a turning point of Buster Keaton’s early movies. Something about the rhythm of the comedy speaks to later films and the undeniable genius of “The General” or “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” Not only does it not let up, it hits in just the right way each time. The theme of the poor slob who can’t seem to get a break has been a common one in Keaton’s movies up to this point, but there’s something wonderful in each revelation as we think for a moment that he’s gotten away, only to wind up on the run again. There is surprise after surprise as the movie progresses. Even the most illogical moments (like being able to eject an elevator through the roof of a building by moving the floor indicator) are funny because they are surprising, surreal, and internally consistent.

All of that said, it’s also really indicative of Keaton’s working method at the time. He had one good idea: his character would be mistaken for a killer because he looked in a jail window as he was photographed, and he started filming with nothing more than that as a script. In that sense, the plot is almost nonexistent (again), and the only thing holding the movie together is impromptu gags, many of which don’t even seem to belong in the same film together. Luckily he had a team of professionals who knew how to work with that, and they wound up putting together a really successful film. This is pretty much how he had learned to work at Comique with Roscoe Arbuckle, so it make sense, but it’s a very different approach to that developed by fellow clown-kings Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd at the time.

I’m always surprised when I see this movie that there’s no actual (animal) goat in it. Somehow I manage to forget that it isn’t about a lonely farm boy who takes his goat to the big city. That must be a story I made up myself.

This has been my contribution to the Buster Keaton Blogathon, hosted by Silentology. Don’t forget to head over and check out the other great blogs contributing this year! Many thanks to Lea for hosting, as always.

Director: Buster Keaton, Malcolm St. Clair

Camera: Elgin Lessley

Starring: Buster Keaton, Virginia Fox, Joe Roberts, Malcolm St. Clair, Edward F. Cline

Run Time: 27 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music) or here (with music).

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February 20, 2021

Gulliver’s Travels among the Lilliputians and the Giants (1902)

Another fantasy from Georges Méliès; this one draws from the work of English wit Jonathan Swift, although the emphasis is on whimsy and special effects rather than satire.

The movie begins with Lemuel Gulliver (evidently Méliès himself, for some reason made up as an old man) holding a lantern and carefully stepping through a set decorated with miniature houses. The buildings vary in architecture, and there seems to be a pagoda shoulder-to-shoulder with a minaret and Greek columns adorn another structure which is near what looks like a Medieval European house. Gulliver points and chuckles at some of the structures, then moves off-stage. The next thing we see is him asleep, evidently somewhere near the town center (based on the proliferation of taller buildings, now all thoroughly European) and a row of tiny people stand on a landing above him. He is draped with ropes, indicating that the Lilliputians have tied him up, and the mob wields weapons, eventually beginning to throw spears into his body, causing him to wake up. The next scene shows him seated at a normal-sized table, using cutlery and a cup all proportioned to his size, while miniature chefs bring up a ladder and climb up it to provide him with food. They pour jug after jug of wine in his cup, which he polishes off with one quaff. Now an entourage arrives, escorting the miniature queen in a palanquin. Gulliver lifts this onto the table and converses with her, then moves her back down to Earth so she doesn’t have to climb the ladder. Now smoke suddenly billows forth from a neighboring building, but Gulliver extinguishes the fire with a normal-sized spritzer he happens to have on hand.

The scene suddenly cuts to a tight three-shot of some people in Medieval dress playing cards around a table. One of these seems to be a dwarf. A young lady comes in bearing a wadded up handkerchief; when she opens it, out tumbles a tiny Gulliver! They stare at him in amazement and laugh, one of the men blows pipe smoke at him. The scene cuts to show Gulliver alone with the young lady giant, on his knee, perhaps making an outlandish proposal. She cups her hand to her ear, evidently unable to hear him and he produces a ladder and climbs up to get closer. She gestures, accidentally knocking him off the ladder and into a giant coffee cup.

The story of Gulliver has always had fairy tale elements that have appealed to children, but Swift’s original story included biting wit and satire of English and European politics. One part that usually makes it into screen adaptations is the war between the Lilliputians and a neighboring nation of tiny people (Blefuscu) over the question of which end of a boiled egg should be cracked open first. Swift intended this as a comment on wars between Catholics and Protestants over the question of transubstantiation, but it translates well to almost any era in which bloodshed occurs over the least little things. The actual method Gulliver used to put out the fire is usually cleaned up, as it is here, however it’s a bit hard to believe that a shipwrecked man managed to salvage his spritzer. Méliès dispenses with pretty much any kind of social commentary here, although it is interesting that in Republican France he retains the Lilliputian nobility and royalty. Of course, children understand kings and queens from a young age, and it fits with his fairy tale setting. The effect of differently-sized people is achieved throughout by the use of a split screen and two separate shots being taken of the actors at different distances from the camera to make them appear larger or smaller. This results in a very limited range of movement for most of them. The most impressive use of this effect is when Gulliver is on the table, surrounded by three giants to the right, left, and behind him. His “stage” is defined by the back of a chair (or probably a set painted to resemble a chair), but it does seem to put tiny him in the middle of giant action. Longer than many of his movies at about four and a half minutes, it’s not an epic like “A Trip to  the Moon,” but it is an interesting piece of work that took obvious time and care.

Director: Georges Méliès

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Georges Méliès

Run Time: 4 Min, 13 secs

You can watch it for free: here (no music) or here (with music)

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January 9, 2021

Getting Acquainted (1914)

This late-period Keystone short from Charlie Chaplin is a somewhat more-sophisticated take on the many “park comedies” he made there; one which emphasizes situation over slapstick. While it’s no major breakthrough, it does pre-sage the work he would soon be starting at Essanay in 1915.

As the movie begins, Charlie is on a bench next to Phyllis Allen. They appear to be a couple, and Charlie seems to be less than enthusiastic about her company, plugging his ears as she speaks at one point. This whole take is done in a rather close two-shot that only shows the upper halves of their bodies – almost innovative for Keystone at the time. An intertitle tells us that Mabel Normand and Mack Sennett are also a married couple “taking some air” together, and they seem much happier, at least until Joe Bordeaux pulls up in a fancy automobile. Mack offers to help him crank it to get started again, but Mabel seems annoyed that he wanders off while Joe just laughs at his efforts to turn the immobile crank. Meanwhile, Phyllis has dozed off, and Charlie tries his luck with Cecile Arnold when she wanders up, but she walks off slightly offended when he seems to pay too close attention to her backside, and quickly runs to the side of her husband, Glen Cavender, who is made up as a Turk and sticks Charlie with a small dagger to drive him off. Charlie now finds Mabel standing unprotected while Mack is busy with the car, and he does his best to make her acquaintance. He does a trick with a thread, pretending to have it balanced on his nose, so that she will get close enough that he can give her a kiss, which results in his getting slapped. She calls Mack over when he won’t go away, but distracted Mack just “introduces” them so that now Charlie feels like he has a license to go on annoying her.

Joe eventually gets his car started and offers Mack a ride, leaving poor Mabel in the hands of lecherous Charlie. In desperation, she calls out for the police, which brings out Edgar Kennedy, in the guise of a Keystone Kop. Edgar chases Charlie through the bushes, back to Mabel and over to where the Turk still lurks, until Charlie is finally able to evade all of the cast for a while in a bush. Meanwhile, Joe lets Mack off and he finds Phyllis, sitting alone under the tree. He takes an interest in her, being just about as obnoxious about it as Charlie was to Mabel. She now calls out for help, making Edgar think that he’s located Charlie, but when he sees Mack, he assumes he’s got the wrong bird and goes on looking until Phyllis sets him straight. Now both Mack and Charlie are trying to evade Edgar, while still occasionally hitting on Mabel, Phyllis, or Cecile when the opportunity arises.

Mabel finds her way over to Phyllis and the two of them, relieved to be in better company than the annoying men, start chatting and telling each other about their husbands (what would Alison Bechdel say?). Charlie sits next to Phyllis, not noticing Mabel at first, and when she introduces them, another there is yelling and soon Charlie is on the run again when Edgar sees him with Phyllis and assumes he is “mashing” on her as well. Mack now finds Mabel and the two of them briefly commiserate until she tries to introduce her new friend, Phyllis. Mack tries to explain himself to Mabel, until Edgar, having lost Charlie, sees him and once again a chase is on. Mack and Charlie hide out in the bushes until Edgar finds them and clocks each of them on the noggin with his billy club. He hauls them past the ladies, who now come over and vouch for their husbands, then he walks off and attacks a young man on a park bench with another girl, apparently just because he’s gone crazy from hunting all these letches. Phyllis hauls Charlie off by the ear and Mabel and Mack laugh at them.

With this movie, I have completed all the reviews of Charlie’s first year in movies, a project I started back in 2014 (Chaplinfilmbyfilm got it done much quicker – but he didn’t have every other 100-year-old movie to contend with as well!). Of the “park comedies” he made, this is among the funniest, and it’s largely because the predictable plot plays out so well and because of the clever use of editing to keep us moving among the couples and their situations rapidly enough that it never gets old. As I suggested, the closer camera in this movie also allows for more intimacy with the characters and gags (like the thread) that might not work with the audience at a distance. It’s interesting to see Mabel Normand and Chaplin working together, despite their earlier differences, with him firmly in the director’s chair, but being quite generous to her as an actor – she gets at least as many laughs as he does.

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Camera: Frank D. Williams

Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Mack Swain, Phyllis Allen, Edgar Kennedy, Joe Bordeaux, Glen Cavender, Cecile Arnold, Harry McCoy

Run Time: 14 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music) or here (with music)

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December 25, 2020

The Great Toe Mystery (1914)

This short comedy from Keystone Studios seems to play upon themes established 11 years earlier in “The Gay Shoe Clerk,” but with a touch of Mack Sennett’s chaotic style thrown in for flavor. It still looks a bit old-fashioned for 1914, possibly deliberately so.

The movie begins with an establishing shot outside of a shoe store. A young lady (Alice Howell) and a man with a silly mustache are standing in front, and he takes her by the arm and leads her inside. We now cut to the interior, where a thin, slightly foppish young man speaks to them. Evidently the first man is buying shoes for himself and his wife. The first shoe clerk summons another over to see to the gentleman, and he leads the lady to the other side of the store, where she sits while the salesman summons another clerk (Charley Chase), this one being flamboyant and feminine in his gestures. She offers him her foot to measure, but he reacts in melodramatic horror to see her toes peeking through the end of a torn stocking. He seems to be lecturing her on hygiene, and she reacts by looking away from him. The husband sees this, and comes over to glare at the clerk. He runs to the back, to get her shoes ready for sale, and decides to put a note in her shoes. He borrows a pen and paper from a female coworker, and then delivers the shoebox to the clearly annoyed lady customer. She and the husband exit the store, evidently arguing about the clerk’s unwanted attentions. They go in separate directions.

The wife returns home (“broken-hearted,” according to an intertitle) and commiserates with her maid (Dixie Chene). She takes a magazine outside to read, discarding the unlucky shoes unopened. Meanwhile, “Mr. Birdie” (the clerk) is now going to the park to for what he hopes to be a rendezvous with a married woman. Of course, he encounters Alice on a park bench, sobbing because of the fight with her husband, and sits next to her, oblivious to her feelings. Now the husband comes home and finds the discarded shoes with the note, vowing to murder the clerk (whom he de-genders as “it” in the intertitles) if he finds them together. The maid is meanwhile flirting with a rather dim-witted young man (possibly a delivery boy, from his attire, or else another servant like a gardener), to the husband’s decided disapproval. The husband rushes out to the park and finds the two of them together, making threatening gestures that the clerk laughs off until he produces a gun and starts shooting at the ground.

Now, a classic Keystone chase begins, and the wife and the maid rapidly enlist the aid of Keystone Kops. Of course, the clerk decides to hide in a chest that the dim-looking servant brings into the house, so now he has no possibility of escape. A comedy routine involves the many steps the servant has to go up (and frequently falls back down) while carrying the chest and tension is held as several people start to open the chest before being distracted by something else. Ultimately, the maid finds him and the chase begins anew, with Birdie hiding in the dumbwaiter, unable to find an unoccupied room to escape into. The Kops now arrive in force, and begin shooting at the servant, not evidently knowing who they are after or why. He hides under the sink, which the Kops promptly shoot full of holes. Finally, the clerk manages to fight everyone off with his handkerchief, knocking over the whole cast, and, snapping his fingers, leaves the house with a rude gesture.

Charley Chase’s performance really makes this movie something special, and it’s very hard for a modern audience not to read his gestures and body language as queer – something which quite possibly could have been intentional on his part, whether or not audiences of 1914 were sophisticated enough to get the joke. That makes it twice as funny that the title of the obvious inspiration of “The Gay Shoe Clerk” had a different meaning at the time. It also struck me with this viewing that the title’s similarity to the other 1903 hit “The Great Train Robbery” (itself basically a well-edited chase movie) might have been intentional as well, meaning that Sennett was lampooning Edison in more than one way here. The editing of this movie keeps it moving effectively, and all of the random elements work together well, with the absurdity of the situation constantly growing, but without giving the audience too much time to reflect on how silly it all is. This is one of the more fun Keystones I’ve seen, in fact and it holds up well enough today.

Director: Charles Avery

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Charley Chase, Alice Howell, Dixie Chene, Chester Conklin, Harry McCoy, Rube Miller

Run Time: 11 Min, 8 secs

You can watch it for free: here.

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November 7, 2020

Gentlemen of Nerve (1914)

This short from Keystone seems to be yet another remake of Charlie Chaplin’s first appearance as the Little Tramp, but also demonstrates how far he had come as a director in a few months. He and the Keystone gang are once again at a racetrack, causing a ruckus.

The movie begins with Chester Conklin and Mabel Normand showing up together at the gate, while Mack Swain and Charlie both try to sneak past the guards to get in. Chester seems very jealous to protect Mabel from harassment by Mack, but has a decidedly roving eye once he sits down next to Phyllis Allen. Early in the picture, we get some actuality footage of drivers competitively changing tires as a part of the races. Meanwhile, after a brief confrontation, Charlie and Mack have teamed up t find a way into the races without paying. They find a loose board in the fence and try to slip through, but Mack is of course much too large and quickly gets stuck. Charlie tires pushing him through from behind, then crawls in through his legs and tries pulling from the other side. A group of revelers is on this side, watching their struggles with amusement. Charlie helps one of them fix a drink, then uses the spritzer to prevent a cop (Edgar Kennedy) from arresting Mack, who finally breaks through. He also sprays Mack in the process. They go their separate ways, and soon Charlie runs into Chester and Mabel.

Just don’t fart, Mack!

Mabel has gotten Chester away from Phyllis, but now she shows an interest in Charlie. They fight in front of a big crowd, most of whom seem to be more interested in Charlie than the races. Chester and Mabel go back to their seats near Phyllis, and get into a fight as well. Charlie finds a seat near Alice Davenport, who seems interested in him until he steals her soda, then starts offering it to other women. Soon Mabel trips over Charlie’s feet, and he seems uncertain which woman to focus on, especially after Mabel ruins his hat. Mabel and Charlie go to look at a race car with a propeller, and soon Charlie is running around the track to avoid getting hit. Chester now insults Phyllis by whispering something in her ear, and she hits him and he runs away, now discovering Mabel and Charlie together. He threatens violence against Mabel, and Charlie takes a long time removing his coat before hitting him. The cop finds Mack and arrests him just as Chester blunders into him from Charlie’s blow and both are taken in while Mabel and Charlie laugh in a close two-shot.

While this movie takes some advantage of the crowds and location of the race track, a lot of it is shot under much more controlled circumstances than “Kid Auto Races at Venice” and it more closely resembles “Mabel’s Busy Day,” except that Mabel and Charlie end up together, rather than as rivals. It’s very easy to see from the scenes with Chaplin in them that he was now a recognizable figure in public, and that the public was eager to watch him. I always remember when I watch these early Chaplins that many critics called him “vulgar” and I certainly thought about this during the scenes in which Charlie tries to push Mack through the fence, often by shoving on his buttocks or pushing them with a stick. There’s even some talk that the women in these movies could have been portraying sex workers, given their ready willingness to flit from one stranger to another, although Phyllis obviously wasn’t willing to go as far as Chester wanted on a first meeting. It seems as if Charlie had figured out by now that his Little Tramp character was the sympathetic one for audiences – he almost always comes out ahead in every situation here, while Mack and Chester are foils for his gags.

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Camera: Frank D. Williams

Starring: Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Chester Conklin, Mack Swain, Alice Davenport, Edgar Kennedy

Run Time: 15 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music) or here (with music).

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October 11, 2020

The Golem (1920)

This German feature film directed by Paul Wegener enters our History of Horror among the first movies modern fans easily recognize as “really” a horror movie. But its place in history remains disputed, with many possible interpretations available, so let’s take a closer look.

The movie begins with a shot of a starry sky above gnarled rooftops, with seven stars in a strange over-lapping configuration. We cut to an old man atop one of those rooftops, peering through a telescope and learn in an intetitle that he is Rabbi Loew (Albert Steinrück), and that he sees bad days ahead for the Jews of Prague in the stars. Close-ups then introduce us to his household – an assistant named Famulus (Ernst Deutsch) and a daughter named Miriam (Lyda Salmonova, in reality the wife of Wegener). These two are both young adults, and they gently flirt as they assist on some alchemical experiment or other. Rabbi Loew interrupts to tell them of his prophecy, then he puts on a tall peaked hat and goes out to inform the other elders of the Ghetto. He advises them to begin a 24-hour vigil of prayer to avert coming disaster. Since he’s a  respected rabbi, the community elders follow is advice.

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July 18, 2020

A Grocery Clerk’s Romance (1912)

This early short from Mack Sennett was shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, before he moved his new Keystone Company out to California. Not surprisingly, it is a slapstick comedy, full of violence and illogic, but with only one Kop this outing.

The movie begins by establishing a simple love triangle. James C. Morton is the “lazy husband” of a plain-looking, middle-aged (uncredited) woman. Ford Sterling is the next-door neighbor (presumably a grocery clerk, though we never see him at his duties) who likes to come over and help with her chores. Oblivious to this domestic drama, Morton heads over to a local bar to get drunk, giving him and pal Gus Pixley the opportunity to do some pratfalls. Meanwhile, Sterling has put on an apron and is amusing the wife as he hangs the laundry, camping for her as he goes. The husband now stumbles home and gets into it with Ford, who drives him off easily. When he tries to return to the bar, he is denied admittance by the local sheriff (Lincoln Plumer), who indicates that he’s had enough, so he staggers into the woods, where, as it happens, a group of foreign-looking anarchists are meeting and showing off their new bomb to each other. They immediately forget about whatever plans they had for the bomb when they discover the “spy” in the woods, and tie up Morton, lighting the fuse.

At this moment, Morton’s child, whose job up to now has been to follow him around sniffling and occasionally tugging on his sleeve, finds her father in dire straits. He tells her to run and get help, meanwhile continuing to struggle with his bonds. She dutifully runs back to mama, who faints dead away at the news. A glint comes into Sterling’s eye as he calculates “in five minutes, she’ll be a widow!” He grabs the screaming child and stashes her in the cellar. He takes out his pocketwatch and counts off the precious seconds. When he feels enough time has passed, he releases the child and wakes the woman; now he starts running through the streets to gather a crowd to come and “help” too late. Unbeknownst to him, of course, the husband has already freed himself. So, when the mob hears an explosion in the trees, and then they run up and find the husband’s hat and coat at the bomb site, they assume the worst, and so does Sterling. He very quickly proposes to the “widow,” who gladly accepts and they prepare a wedding ceremony almost instantly, everyone turning out in their finery. Morton, of course, goes back to the bar where his surprised friend tells him his wife is being married at that very moment. They rush over to interrupt the ceremony and the child finally fingers Sterling as the reason the rescue party arrived late. Ford runs off in disgrace, and Morton takes his wife in an embrace. She doesn’t look entirely pleased.

It’s odd to see Sterling without his usual makeup in this film – I actually thought it was Sennett himself at first – but his trademark over-the-top facial expressions are very much on display. The movie didn’t make me laugh, though it did get a couple of guffaws from me near the end (about par for the course for a Mack Sennett, actually). Overall, the structure of the movie reminds me of “A Muddy Romance,” “The Gusher,” and other movies Sennett would later make with Chaplin and/or Sterling and Mabel Normand. This might be seen as the template for those later films, with Sennett always ready to improvise when something interesting happens like an oil fire or a drained lake. In that sense, it’s a rare historical relic, if not exactly classic slapstick.

Director: Mack Sennett

Camera: Unknown

Starring: Ford Sterling, James C. Morton, Gus Pixley, Lincoln Plumer

Run Time: 7 Min

You can watch it for free: here.

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February 15, 2020

The Garage (1920)

This is the last short film from the Comique Studios starring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. after this, Keaton would strike out on his own and Arbuckle would make a brief stab at feature films before being embroiled in scandal, but for now, we get to enjoy the duo in action for one last time.

Arbuckle and Keaton play automobile mechanics and firemen at a garage in a fire station. They work for an old man who seems to have high blood pressure (Dan Crimmins). Molly Malone plays the boss’ daughter who is being courted by a man named Jim (Harry McCoy), though she turns him down after the flowers he brings her end up accidentally soaked in motor oil thanks to Fatty and Buster. Livid, Jim raises the alarm in the fire station to make Fatty and Buster think there is a fire and forcing them to rush across town. However, Jim accidentally starts a real fire while trying to exit the station and the firemen return to put out the fire and rescue Mollie who is trapped inside. When Fatty, Buster and several of the townspeople try to rescue Molly using a life net, she bounces up into the telephone wires. Fatty and Buster eventually get Molly down but become trapped themselves; luckily Mollie moves a car beneath them just before they fall and all three ride off together.

The summary above focuses on the “plot,” but really misses most of the film. Like most of the Keaton/Arbuckle shorts, the story is just a thin skeleton on which to hang a series of gags, which come fast and thick here. Right off the bat, we see Arbuckle washing down a car at the opening, and he seems to work extra hard on a window, before leaning through the window to clean the outside of the car, demonstrating that it was open the whole time! Keaton has some beer with his lunch, but decides it’s a bit thin and adds some wood alcohol to the mix. Keaton and Arbuckle get into a fight, throwing pies, soapy rags, oil and everything else they can find at one another, making a huge mess of themselves and the car Arbuckle just finished washing down. Then they put it on a giant spinning plate and spray it with a hose while the manager does pratfalls to distract the customer. And all this is just the first few minutes of the movie! Probably one of the best-loved sequences is where Keaton, having been chased by Luke the Dog and losing his pants as a result, pretends to be a Scotsman by cutting a kilt off a poster for Scotch whiskey and does a ridiculous jig in front of a policeman. Then he hides by walking behind Arbuckle, then switching to the front when the cop is behind them. None of this has anything to do with the garage (though it is loosely tied in to Jim’s attempts to date Mollie), but it works because it doesn’t need to make sense to be funny.

Unlike some of their earlier work, this one seems to flow naturally from one scene into the next, despite the madcap pacing. There is sort of a divide between reel one, which is mostly about fixing cars, and reel two, which is mostly about fighting fires, but there isn’t quite as much sense of the film being two movies stitched together as in “The Butcher Boy” for example. Arbuckle and Keaton are clearly having fun every minute, and although the movie ends with Keaton acting as chauffeur while Mollie and Fatty snuggle in the back seat, there is very little sense of Arbuckle being the “lead” and Keaton being a “sidekick.” The two of them are fully a team now. It’s sort of sad to think that they never worked together again, but in fact Keaton was headed for bigger things. We’ll be seeing some of that in months and years to come.

Director: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

Camera: Elgin Lessley

Starring: Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, Molly Malone, Harry McCoy, Daniel Crimmins, Luke the Dog

Run Time: 25 Min

You can watch it for free: here (no music).

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