Won in a Closet

Mabel Normand stars and even directs this Keystone farce. Like many of them, it gives a slapstick twist to a D.W. Griffith piece, under whom Sennett and Normand had worked. In this case, the immediate source looks to be AN UNSEEN ENEMY.

Unfortunately, it is a rather poor effort, despite some interesting split-screen work. Mabel and Charles Avery are the young rustic lovers. Meanwhile, their parents are indulging in such lascivious activities as chin-chucking, when the approach of the young 'uns causes them to hide in a closet. On finding someone in the closet, the kids call the cops...

The shenanigans offered in this one are uninspired for the Keystones of this period and the fact that the National Film Preservation Foundation has posted it to their website at sixteen frames a second makes it almost unwatchable -- you can see motion blur, one-word titles remain on the screen for four seconds and given that most one-reelers time in at eight minutes by the 1920s, the fifteen minutes this one takes to play out is almost unbearable -- at a guess it should be projected at no fewer than nineteen frames a second. I'd avoid this one until some one puts it out at a suitable speed.