Hoboken to Hollywood (USA,1926)

Billy Bevan plays the character of a typical office man, both formal and stressed. But his routine changed when the president of the company where he worked transferred Bevan to California to start the company’s office there. Bevan got very excited about this change, probably in the hope of having a less stressful lifestyle. He called his wife to tell her to make the arrangements and then it is shown the car they will use to drive to California. Considering the amount of things they carried and how they were disposed, it seemed they were going to spend a long time in California or, at least, that they were not organized people. After a brief conversation, Bevan, his wife and mother in law started their journey.

We can also see another couple who is heading West in a journey that doesn’t seem calm at all. 

Both couples meet and everyone’s problems only seem to escalate. At this point of film the gags with cars are particularly funny and very skillfully performed, which is admirable, considering the difficulty of stunts in those scenes. Actually, comedy films involving mechanical gags were not so rare back to 1920s (this is particularly noticeable in Buster Keaton's films, among others), which indicates how machines and automobiles were already an integral part of people’s lives back then. The audience really wonders if those people will ever be able to reach their destination, considering their everlasting difficulties on the way among rough desert landscapes. The elements of landscape were explored as much as possible as prompts to the gags, including the animals and plants around.

In the end, everyone got to arrive in California, but a huge surprise would wait for Bevan and things would not be as good in California as he imagined. When he arrived at the office, Bevan realized he would have to work with a fellow who was very familiar to him. It would end up causing completely unexpected consequences to Bevan and his family.

Another highlight is the kinda ethnically insensitive jokes related to the black servant, who was always too afraid of everything and spoke incorrectly, which is not something uncommon in 1920s films by Mack Sennett Comedies. The stereotypes of California as being the land of sunshine and Hollywood as the place where dreams come true were also employed. 

Wall Street Blues (USA,1924)

Del Lord is a director who became best known for the Three Stooges films he directed in 1930s. But in 1920s he directed some of the weirdest films by Mack Sennett Comedies. Weird films in the regard of portraying mega crazy situations, even within comedy’s standards and having a cartoom-like style. This film is a good example of it, with a plot that is not really linear, although the pace is not as frantic as of slapstick comedies, for instance.

The film starts with some rather crazy and unusual gags in a bank, where Bevan works. Then we see gags with objects that seem to have a life of their own, which is a characteristic of this type of comedies. A particularly noteworthy gag is when Bevan accidentally vaccums the poodle belonging to client who has just arrived the bank and the poor little animal ends up inside the vacuum cleaner, to the dismay of the owner. But things can always get worse and it is exactly what happened when the dog suddenly disappears as if by magic. 

Some crooks try to make a dishonest scheme, a robbery occurs, which gives room to many insane gags related to heights. The bank cashier fights the robbers and then there is a rapid succession of gags, which end up in a marriage inside a ship and its crazy results.

This film is very nice and has a style that was not common not even in its era, the gags are nice, actors look confident and skilled, with good comedic timing. However, as it is a kinda unusual sort of comedy it can be confused to some people and even make others feel ill at easy, which does not really affect the good quality of its production. 

Be Reasonable (USA,1921)

A fine and highly original film, which has the craziest situations you can imagine. But being unrealistic is part of its charm. This film is far from slapstick or situational standards, as it is neither grounded on physical gags or situations from the real life. The plot is permeated by over the top situations that run smoothly regardless of their incongruence and within a mega fast pace and the result is even a bit “surrealistic”. These sort of comedies were relatively common in Mack Sennett comedies throughout the 1920s (of which Charles Bowers was one of exponents, among many others). 

Billy Bevan is one of many underrated silent comedians, who was successful in 1920s, but ended up being nearly forgotten after the end of silent era. This is something really undeserved, as he was a good comedian and even innovative on his own right. 

Undoubtedly, one of most praised scenes of this film is the one with the periscope on the beach. Bevan goes to the beach, but he does not want to miss any beautiful women and he looks for them with a periscope while he is buried under the sand. Needless to say that the beach provides a great opportunity for the Bathing Beauties show up, together with the characteristic swimming suits of the era. Since the very beginning of Keystone studios, back to 1912, Mack Sennett made the most of beach sceneries in his comedies, not only to fill them in with beautiful women, but also making the sea part of the films and showing people swimming, enjoying the nature, etc.

Then Bevan finds a very beautiful girl (who had a equally cute dog) on the beach with his hilarious periscope and all of a sudden he gives her a pearl necklace. Unfortunately to Bevan the girl is more interested in the handsome life saver. Bevan tries to recover the necklace but the girl refuses to give it back to him. 

But Bevan has other problems, he has to pay for the necklace or return it to the store. Since the girl did not want to return it, his only alternative is going to her house (Yes, we have no idea how he got to find out the address of a girl he has just met, but this film isn’t supposed to be reasonable, despite the title). Of course Bevan is not exactly a skilled burglar, the girl finds out her house is being robbed and calls the police. 

What follows is another famous and hilarious scene of this film, which shows Bevan being chased by the police. This scene is even compared with the famous chase scene of Buster Keaton film “Cops!”, that was made on the following year. If you watch both of these films, you will realize it is impossible not to make the comparison, as the scenes of both films have many similarities. 

After the chase, there is the end of the film, which is also really funny, with perfect timing and many insane situations happening in a matter of a couple of minutes.

This is a very funny film, which original gags, quite good comedic timing, good acting and production. Really worth to be carefully seen. 

A Cure for Pokeritis (USA,1912)

John Bunny was one of first comedy stars of American cinema. The comedies he made to Vitagraph studios (a pioneer cinema studio in the United States) together with English actress Flora Finch stood out due to their sophistication compared with other comedies of the era, being the forerunner of situational comedies, like those Hal Roach studios made so extensively in 1920s. Considering that situational comedies were not so common back to 1910s and that slapstick was more widely produced, those “Bunny-Finch” comedies were even ahead of their time.

The husband plays poker quite often and loses equally often. As expected, the place where he played is a quite masculine environment, with men smoking cigars and elegantly dressed. No women is seen there.

In the next scene Flora Finch (who plays the role of gambler’s wife) is seen in a living room with very beautiful furniture. The husband returns home and the wife seems really annoyed. Upon careful inspection of the house where the couple lived, the furniture and objects we can see that they were relatively well off people.

Considering how annoyed the wife was, the husband swore he would never play again, but even the audience could see that it would not really last. The husband soon finds an excuse to leave home, so he could play poker again without his wife realizing it. And the gambling starts all over again. However, while he sleeps he inadvertently starts talking and his plan of hiding his poker habit of his wife goes down the drain. But the wife also has her own plans, with the assistance of her cousin.

Then, the wives of all gamblers gather together and a poker meeting of the guys is suddenly disrupted.

Although the acting of cast is reasonably naturalistic, we can see some vestiges of stage acting, like exaggerated gestures or facial expressions in some scenes. Such stagy acting was already a bit outdated even in 1910s and would soon be replaced by fully naturalistic acting, like those of Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford.

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.