Hands Up!

If the name Raymond Griffith is familiar today only to historians and silent comedy completists, blame the fact that his reputation rests entirely on two surviving but rarely shown features: 'Paths To Paradise' (1925) and 'Hands Up!' (1926). Neither comedy can match the sublime heights of invention achieved by Keaton, Chaplin or Lloyd (or, in his brief prime, Harry Langdon), but Griffith was an engaging talent who, given time, could have developed into a master craftsman. The Civil War comedy 'Hands Up!' is more self-consciously offbeat than the earlier film, showing one direction Griffith might have pursued had his career been more successful. Again the playful impostor (a role he could have patented), Griffith plays a Confederate spy (dressed, incongruously, in top hat and tails) sent West to hijack a Union gold shipment. The film is a daring, if not always successful, departure from the conventional farce of 'Paths To Paradise' (with a curious romantic triangle involving twin sisters), but unfavorable (and unfair: the film is more a Western) comparisons to Buster Keaton's Civil War classic 'The General' have doomed it to obscurity. Griffith, and his films, deserve better.