One of the great silent comedies—all killer, no filler. It's part of a Hal Roach series built around ethnic humourist Max Davidson, a Jewish dad who is always running into trouble. Here his son Ignatz, the memorably speckled Spec O’Donnell, missteps just before the celebratory dinner for a Montague–Capulet engagement. Appropriately, it's something new made from the best of the old: it opens with a variation on the Lumière Brothers's L'Arroseur Arrosé, canonically regarded as the screen's first comedy, and it climaxes with a charades display, in which our lovebirds dance like chickens!
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The Boss Didn't Say Good Morning 1937
MGM Miniature, and oddity, directed by a young Jacques Tourneur. It's notable for its modestly affecting representation of an anxiety disorder: Jack Mulhall is a good family man and employee who goes to pieces when the boss Granville Bates grimaces in his direction one morning.
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What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City 1901
A woman's skirt shoots up when she walks under the gushing air of a sidewalk grate, fifty-four years before Marilyn's iconic performance in The Seven Year Itch. Only today have I learned the historical significance of this film's title. Why does it happen on Twenty-Third Street? The answer can be found by pairing this film with the 1903 actuality At the Foot of the Flatiron, in which pedestrians clutch their hats and skirts on a windy day on the corner…
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I Love Melvin 1953
One of the 50 best films in the history of cinema. Starstruck gal Debbie Reynolds wants to be on the cover of Look magazine — paging Dr. Laura Mulvey? — and apprentice photographer Donald O'Connor promises he'll help. Perfectly trifling, then, but what's remarkable here isn't the what but the how. Its wide-eyed stars direct off Singin' in the Rain (which O'Connor knowingly references with a lamppost leap), the dance numbers here rank among the most creative ever made for…
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