If
you expect realism , don’t ever watch this film. But if you just want to
relax and laugh without further questions, this is the film for you.
However, we have to admit that never has the sentence “He flirts with anything that wears skirts” made so much sense.
A
typical film by Keystone studios with a basic plot filled with
unrealistic situations, to say the least, and many physical gags, but
this is exactly what makes this film so charming.
Here
Fatty Arbuckle is a married man who can’t help flirting with beautiful
girls all the time. He can’t even conceal it from his wife, who clearly
doesn’t like his behavior at all. According to imdb website the actress
who plays his wife is Minta Durfee, who also happened to be Fatty’s wife
in real life.
In
one occasion, after his wife sees Fatty flirting with a woman she
argues with him. Then, he decides to go outside and relax a little and
ends up in a park, which was a typical setting for many silent slapstick
comedies, including Keystone ones, and he sees what he considers a
beautiful woman. He immediately follows her and starts his usual
flirting, but the “girl” happens to be a Indian rajah who was
inadvertently walking down the park in weird clothes. And the rajah has
an umbrella, guns and a sword and unfortunately no patience at all with
flirts.
You
may think: “My Goodness! Couldn’t Fatty know the difference between a
girl and a rajah?” No, he couldn’t. And the film is rather over the top
for many other reasons. Isn’t it just a little strange that a rajah in
typical clothes was carrying guns and an umbrella? This isn’t the only
crazy component of the plot, as rajah’s chacracterization was over the
top even within standards of silent slapstic comedies, as his fake beard
looked so fake that it seems the actor (Edgar Kennedy) had cut a rug
and attached it directly to his face. Fatty also has a very boyish
temper, behaving like a kid who can’t control any of his impulses rather
than acting like a grown up man.
Two
other men had already flirted with the rajah when Fatty approached him
and the rajah is already running out of patience then. As a result, he
assaults Fatty and then runs after him with two revolvers. For some
unknown reason, the rajah’s guns never need reloading and all bullets
hit Fatty only on the butt. Perhaps, the rajah had eyesight as bad as
Fatty’s. Anyway, considered the amount of smoke coming from those guns,
it wouldn’t really come as a surprise if Fatty died of smoke
intoxication. Something that also must be highlighted is that even
though Fatty was shot many times on his butt throughout the film he
doesn’t seem to feel much pain out of his injuries. Furthermore, some
situations are rather hair-raising and this is perhaps the reason why
Fatty’s hair was untidy throughout the film even though his clothes were
always in perfect state and weren’t even dirty after he falling on the
floor so many times.
Fatty
is getting desperate and runs away back to his home, but is followed by
the rajah, who “miraculously” end up having a sword in addition to his
revolvers. And his house, as most houses in Northern hemisphere, doesn’t
have a fence or wall around the property, so the rajah ends up easily
entering the house. Fatty locks himself and his wife in a room. It must
also be highlighted that Durfee doesn’t have the most naturalist acting
in the world in this film. Some of her gestures are histrionic and we
can see that she spoke a lot throughout her scenes. But all situations
are so over the top that her acting ends up being not even noticed among
so many unrealistic things happening at the same time.
In
the middle of all that mess at home, Fatty’s wife gets to approach the
window and cry for help. Who will help her? The Keystone cops, of
course. The cop who listens to her cries also have a fake moustache that
is crazy even within the crazy standards of fake moustaches of
slapstick comedies. It really seems as if the actor (William Hauber) had
cut off a cat’s tail and attached it directly to his face. It´s even
surprising that such big moustache didn’t affect his balance while
walking. Fatty gets to run away from the bedroom and try to hide in the
backyard, but with no success. Meanwhile, the cop gets other cops to
help him to solve this problem in Fatty’s house. After a while, the cops
arrive to Fatty’s house, but since those cops aren’t the most competent
policemen on Earth, they have difficulty handling the angry rajah. The
rajah uses his revolver against the cops and much smoke is produced out
of that. Then Fatty and the rajah start fighting and Fatty’s wife,
instead of helping her husband beat the rajah, just yells and jumps like
a typical Victorian damsel in distress, unable to defend herself and
her peeers. After Fatty got to beat the rajah a little the cops got to
leave the house with the rajah, although it was a hard task for THREE
cops to arrest ONE man.
After
all that trouble , when we think Fatty will finally get to have a happy
time, despite having many bullets on his butt and being severely beaten
by the rajah, he ends up being beaten by his own wife. All of a sudden,
the same woman, who behaved like a Victorian maiden some minutes ago,
gets a violence outburst and beats him without mercy. And the same man
who could beat a rajah who had two revolvers and a sword can’t resist
being beaten by a woman.
Futher reading and materials:
1. Some brief information on this film in the site Silent Era http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/F/FlirtsMistake1914.html
2.
Mack Sennett's Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and
His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and
Personnel
http://www.amazon.com/Mack-Sennetts-Fun-Factory-Filmography/dp/0786477113
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