Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Mack Sennett
Stars: Ford Sterling, Mabel
Normand and Henry Lehrman
Release Date: 27 November 1913
(USA)
Production Co: Keystone Film
Company
Sound Mix: Silent
Color: Black and White
Plot Keywords: Jewish | Silent
Genres: Short | Comedy | War
Cohen is a sergeant in the Union
Army and the bitter rival of another officer for the attentions of Rebecca.
Like most burlesque Jewish characters of this period, this caricature borders
on anti-semitism. Yet Cohen is also the hero of the film.
'Cohen Saves the Flag' is a very
early Keystone comedy, one of several starring Ford Sterling as a scruffy
coward named Izzy Cohen. All of the instalments in the 'Cohen' series feature
some humour based on Jewish stereotypes, which has dated badly; fortunately,
these films also have clever storylines and non-ethnic slapstick gags, so (with
the possible exception of 'Cohen Collects a Debt') these films are still funny
in spite of some (arguably) anti-Semitic content. All of the other 'Cohen'
shorts are set in the contemporary present; 'Cohen Saves the Flag' backdates
Izzy Cohen to 1861 in order to put him in a Civil War setting.
The Keystone comedies were filmed
on the cheap, but Keystone's directors often employed the clever device of
filming their actors in front of some elaborate public event, thus enhancing a
quickie movie's production values. The best-known examples of this are the
soapbox derby gate-crashed by Chaplin's tramp in 'Kid Auto Races at Venice' and
the parade in 'A Busy Day'. For 'Cohen Saves the Flag', ingeniously,
producer/director Mack Sennett was able to piggyback on the filming of 'Battle
of Gettysburg', an elaborate Civil War drama produced by Thomas Ince. (Ince's
big-budget dramas and Mack Sennett's low-budget comedies were both bankrolled
by the same financiers, so Keystone actually had permission to shoot 'Cohen
Saves the Flag' on the sidelines of Ince's war film!)
In the opening scene (which
unconvincingly depicts 1861), Cohen (Ford Sterling) and his rival Goldberg
(Henry Lehrman) are competing for the affections of dainty Mabel Normand. The
men resolve their differences intelligently by poking each other's eyes and
biting each other's ears. I suspect that there was meant to be some ethnic
subtext here: ie, supposedly, Jews fight 'dirty' ... but in fairness, there are
many Keystone comedies that feature dirty fighting among non-ethnic characters.
Anyway, I laughed heartily while these two 'Jewish' characters noshed and
gnashed each other.
Suddenly the Civil War breaks
out. Mostly to impress Mabel, cowardly Cohen enlists in the Union army and
somehow receives a sergeant's stripes. Goldberg enlists too ... and becomes a
lieutenant, with Cohen under his command. Gleefully, Lieutenant Goldberg sends
Cohen into battle, confident that he'll get killed.
The battlefield sequences in this
cheapjack comedy are genuinely impressive; Mack Sennett (underrated as a
director) manages to frame the action so that Ince's costume extras in the
background actually seem to be in the same movie as the Keystone clowns in the
foreground. More by accident than anything else, Cohen rescues a Union flag
during his terrified efforts to escape the cannon fire. Goldberg finds Cohen
guilty of desertion, and convenes a firing-squad to shoot him. The climax of
this comedy - with some good work by Normand - is unexpectedly exciting as well
as funny.
Ford Sterling is now almost
completely forgotten, which is a great shame. He was an extremely talented and
versatile comedian. Funny, too. Even people who are familiar with Ford
Sterling's work seldom realise how extremely *influential* he was on the work
of later comedians. Harvey Korman built an entire career out of imitating Ford
Sterling. You may have noticed that, whenever modern actors imitate silent-film
comedians, they always do a little hop straight up into the air. This cliche
has been around at least as far back as 1928's 'Show People', a silent-film
comedy *about* silent-film comedians. But in fact, Ford Sterling was the
silent-film comedian who *invented* this bit ... and the only one who
consistently used it. Sterling had a vast repertory of gestures and facial
expressions, which he used for expressing an astonishingly subtle range of
emotions. And Sterling proved his ability as a dramatic actor in 'He Who Gets
Slapped', in which he had the great honour of applying makeup (on-camera) to
Lon Chaney. Sterling successfully made the transition to talking-picture roles
(notably as the White King in 'Alice in Wonderland'), but an accident caused him
to lose a leg, forcing his retirement and hastening his death.
Connections
Features The Battle of Gettysburg
(1913).
