Goodness Gracious

I saw this screened at the 2014 Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto) and am still grasping for ways to describe it adequately. It plays fast and loose with time, spatial dimension, surrealism and doesn't so much break down the fourth wall as completely smash it apart.

Just when I think I've seen at least a representative selection of everything that was made during the silent era, up pops something to show me that there was no limit to the inventiveness and ingenuity on display at that time. Aside from CGI, within a few short years of cinema's inception they really did invent pretty much everything we now take for granted.

This is one of the occasions when one of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's reviews can actually be taken at face value. He describes the film accurately enough and genuinely appears to have actually seen it, but no mere words could do this 28 minutes or so of inspired, madcap lunacy justice. It does bear strong comparison with the British "Pimple" comedy shorts being made by Fred Evans around the same time. Though the Pimple films I've seen so far are amongst my very favourite silent film offerings of all, in many ways this surpasses them in almost every regard.

As of the time of writing, this comedy masterpiece is unavailable, outside of a festival screening or visit to an archive. Hopefully that won't always be the case.

My verdict? Much, much more please!