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Silent Clowns
Topic Started: Oct 6 2012, 09:47 AM (2,470 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Sunday Slapstick #20

Fatty's Tintype Tangle (Keystone, 1915) Dir. Roscoe Arbuckle

Well, I know the DVD company hoped that presenting a large package of Arbuckle film would restore his reputation as a rival to Chaplin and Keaton, but I think it had the opposite effect: it shows that he was a one-trick pony, agile as all get out for such a big man, but any ability to garner laughs these films might've had 90 years ago evaporated somewhere along the way. I've seen plenty of Keystone films of the era I thought were funny; but Fatty? No. In this one, Fatty lives with his horrid mother-in-law and wife Louise Fazenda; after some nonsense with the old bat (and Fatty doing some juggling with a pancake and a pan, which he does throughout his film career and was still doing in his final shorts in the early '30s) he heads out to the park, where a traveling photographer snaps his picture next to the beautiful wife of jealous Edgar Kennedy, who grabs his guns and chases Fatty all over the house, shooting him in his fat ass about 1,000 times. The finale, with the family giving chase on a grocer's wagon and then three on a horse, with the Keystone Kops in hot pursuit, is a gem, and even Fatty impresses, as he tries to flee across telephone wires(!). This is also the first 2-reeler I've seen that had an "intermission" card to let the audience know that they were changing the reels! Still, I was glad when it was over. I may well recall on my deathbed how little I added to my life in 2012-13 by watching Fatty Arbuckle and Mr. Wong pictures.

Young Mr. Jazz (Rolin, 1919) Dir. Hal Roach

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Harold Lloyd film (a bonus on the Criterion Safety Last). Harold is trying to date Bebe, but her dad, Bud Jamison, is against THAT, so the two of them, on the run, go to the seedy part of town and end up in a speakeasy full of pickpockets. After a wild dance contest (apparently, Harold & Bebe were real-life avid dancers who won many such contests) they discover Daddy in a secluded booth with a hussy. The final sequence, a free-for-all fight, is good of type, if not the Lloyd stuff we'd come to expect, but I loved everything about this short, including the wonderful scenes of a Southern California that no longer exists. Was there a Hal Roach film of the silent era that Noah Young WASN'T in???

Shiver and Shake (Roach, 1922) Dir. J.A. Howe

Paul Parrott and his bride move into a house they think is haunted, but it's just a parrot and a cat getting tangled in a sheet. Hmmmm. That gag, and the colored guy who acts all a-scared, leads me to believe that somebody behind this ended up doing Three Stooges scenarios several years later.

A Ten-Minute Egg (Roach, 1924) Dir. Leo McCarey

Charley's his usual milquetoast self, so he masquerades as a tough guy in a pool hall to impress his girl. He's kicked in the ass by a midget on a chair(!) and then tangles with tough, uh, Noah Young. Told you. Ends with a melee similar to the Lloyd one. An okay short, but so much better was coming from Mr. Chase that it makes me impatient. I am so happy he found his way.

We're out of Harry Langdon silent shorts, but hey, we'll get to his features (and some of his talkie shorts) anon. I liked his Columbia talkies well enough, but I've only seen a couple of his Roach shorts and hated 'em. So we shall see what we shall see what we shall... uh, what, now?
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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