The Dippy Dentist (USA,1920)

Beautiful scenery, ingenious intertitles, as we can expect from a comedy by Hal Roach. This film really provides a nice excerpt on how people lived so many years ago. A black boy is part of the cast, although his character is very stereotyped even in his lines in intertitles. Those who have already watched “Our Gang” can see a familiar setting in some scenes of this film. 

Dentists haven’t been new in silent comedy and even Laurel and Hardy had some gags about it. The fear caused by going to the dentist can be very funny sometimes. This film’s plot isn’t really innovative or has gags out of the standard, but it is easy to understand and entertaining. 

In the very beginning of the film we see a “French beauty specialist”, a girl who has many suitors. This scene gives us short glimpses of how beauty parlors looked back to early 1920s. One of girl’s suitors is a dentist, although she didn’t seen very excited about him. 

Then we see Pollard in a rather funny outdoors scene, where we can have a sample of 1920s vehicles. 

In the next scene we see some crooks with a bottle of liquor. We must not forget that prohibition had recently started in the United States, so this kind of trade was considered illegal. The police chases the crooks, who leave a bag behind them in the middle of all mess. Pollard grabs the bag, unaware of its content. A short time later, he steals the clients of the dentist in a rather unorthodox way. Pollard then starts taking care of the clients, in the rudest and roughest way possible. 

Then, old Pollard’s sweetheart arrives at the office, with a toothache. He treats her pain, but takes advantage of his position to kiss the girl as much as he wants while she sleeps on the chair. A police officer arrives and sees what Pollard is doing and the officer chases him, both guys completely ignoring the sleeping girl on the chair. 

Those Bitter Sweets (USA,1915)

Considering the usual frantic pace, rather physical gags of Keystone studio films of 1910s, this film is much slower in comparison, providing a more naturalistic, life-like result than usual output of Keystone films in that decade. 

In a sunny day, a man is taking his sweetheart for a ride in his car. Another man with a noticeable fake mustache enters the car with them, but, as the first intertitle says “Three is a crowd”. The poor woman ends up barely having a place to sit. The second man is clearly interested in the girl too. Then, the three of them go for a ride in a relatively fast speed for 1915s standards. 

One of the girl’s suitors meets her father, but the other one ends up showing up at her house with a dog, then both suitors start fighting. However, the girl makes things complicated by giving preference to one of suitors, then she turns down that suitor in favor of the second one. She goes with one of her suitors to a restaurant, but the other suitor ends up being the waiter of the place and, apparently, he lied to his sweetheart about his actual occupation because his first reaction on seeing the pair is hiding himself rather than immediately confronting his opponent. Then, the waiter puts on some clothes over his uniform as if he had accidentally met the pair in the restaurant, but his lie doesn’t work as the girl sees the uniform under his clothes. In the middle of the argument between the three of them (the girl and both of her suitors), the waiter’s boss shows up, which confirms that the waiter actually worked there. 

The turned down suitor-waiter, dominated by jealousy, poisons some chocolates. The restaurant’s delivery man delivers the chocolates to the pair, but the girl ends up giving the box of chocolates to somebody else, instead. The waiter regrets what he did and looks for the pair to have the box of chocolates back, but it was too late. Then, the three of them (again, the girl and both of her suitors) try to recover the box of poisoned chocolates. What follows is a very fast chase (extremely common throughout silent comedies of all American studios), involving more than one means of transportation. It was necessary to be fast, as the box of chocolates ended up being got by a group of people and eaten at any minute. 

At this point of film we see something that became one of trademarks of Keystone studios: Beautiful women in bathing suits, something very innovative for the era. The diving scenes of the girls are among the funniest of the film. Of course, the poisoned chocolates weren’t eaten and a tragedy was avoided just in time. A happy end, but it didn’t prevent lots of slapstick from taking place. 

The Ragtime Band (USA,1913)

This film fits perfectly into the tradition of Keystone studios of portraying people of working classes. There is a very young Mabel Normand, fake mustaches and Ford Sterling in a comedic acting too over the top for nowadays' standards, even bordering the grotesque. But we must not forget that such acting was still made back to 1910s, a heritage of ways of entertainment older than the cinema, like vaudeville, circus, stage, etc.

There is a band playing in front of a house. Then, the same band is shown in a rehearsal. Mabel goes to the place where the band is rehearsing to watch it, as she was apparently very excited about the band. There is a fight and Ford Sterling kicks out one of members of the band. Mabel goes outside, sees that guy who was kicked out and listens to his music with lots of interest. A short time later Ford Sterling goes outside, sees what's going on and gets really outraged. Sterling leaves the scene with Mabel and they return to her house to see her mother. 

The band leaves for the performance. Mabel is in the audience. Before the band's performance begins, there is a weird performance by women who had a kinda doubtful reputation, holding placards with her names and addresses. The audience laughed, but not everyone was happy with those women on stage. Even before the band comes to the stage, we can see the audience wasn't exactly well-educated. Then the worst happens: The audience throws lots of vegetables on the band members. Sterling reacts and throws a vegetable back towards the audience, but ends up hitting Mabel instead. 

Finally, there is a general mess with a plentybof food being thrown and Sterling tried to solve the problem by getting a hose and wetting the entire audience. He fell on his butt (a common gag of slapstick comedy of that era) and this is the end of another typical early film by Keystone studios.