Oh, You Ragtime!

Guy Oliver has just moved into his new apartment. He decides to check out the state of his piano by playing "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and when he does, everyone in earshot dances until he stops.

Eclair was a successful French studio in the era; they had pioneered in the production of serials and decided to get in on the lively production scene in America. By the time they shut down in 1916, the American branch had produced almost four hundred short subjects.

Because this was their first year, they wanted to hit the ground running and they must have recycled a lot of old movies. This one is pretty much a remake of Louis Feuillade's 1909 short "La Bous-Bous-Mie". It will not strike the modern eye as particularly cinematic, but imagine it playing on the screen with the orchestra playing to beat the band and you'll get an idea of what was going on in cinema -- or had been going on three years earlier; movies were evolving rapidly.

If you wish, you can look at this on the Eye Institute on Youtube. There's no soundtrack, but I'm sure a vintage rag can be found somewhere on the site.

This is a very standard French vaudeville gag but would not necessarily have been familiar to US audiences. Feuillade's La Bous-bous-mie (1909) for Gaumont does have similarities (although "the servants at play" belongs to a slightly different genre) but there had also been the earlier Gaumont film, Le piano irresistible (1907), also about a musician who has just moved in, and then Pathé's La Valse à la mode in 1908 featuring a young and very lanky Maurice Chevalier (often high on cocaine in those days). The version of the latter available on the internet is silent but the Pathé catalogue is quite specific about the music involved and it should have The Merry Widow as accompaniment.

Here Chautard has virtually just americanised the story, replacing "waltz" by "ragtime" and "The Merry Widow" by Alexander's Ragtime Band" in the first part. Again the music to be used for accompaniment is made quite specific by showing the sheet-music on the piano. For the second part he reverts to a waltz (not specified although I suspect the title was originally visible). It is a pleasant little gag - essentially timeless - that, suitably accompanied, was sure to play well in a cinema.

The general idea of "irresistible dancing" is re-used beautifully by Max Linder in one of the finest scenes in his US film, Seven Years' Bad Luck. To work well the gag really needs the central character to be "hyper", which was very much the case with both Chevalier (the cocaine would have helped) and with Linder whose "Max" (seemingly so suave and respectable and totally different from "Charlot") is always close to the edge.