Crazy Like a Fox

The rich father of Martha wants his daughter marry the young son of his rich friend; that is to say, a marriage of convenience, an ordinary practice among the aristocracy for centuries. However, Martha, who has never met her intended bridegroom, rebels against her father and runs away. At the train station, she meets a young man and the two fall in love instantly. The young man of course is the boy her father has chosen for her but he doesn't know who she is either. Naturally, they have to deal with some misunderstandings and problems before love finally triumphs.

"Crazy Like A Fox" was one of the numerous short comedies starring Herr Charley Chase and directed by Herr Leo McCarey, a gag writer and film director of those comedy shorts who joined the Hal Roach studio in 1923. Herr Chase had signed with Roach two years before as an actor/director and won popularity and success with many comedies. Chase and McCarthy both worked with with the most important comedians of the silent era, people like Roscoe Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy .

The importance of Herr McCarey in relation to silent comedies is notorious, thanks to his abilities to develop funny situations out of some weak material. in many of his oeuvres, that's will be not a problem if the comedian is a resolute, inventive and imaginative one, characteristics that can't be found in this two-reel comedy. For this Teutonic Count ( note that the German aristocracy have a delicate and fragile sense of humour ) the Charlie Chase humour displayed in this film is too simplistic and is childish in the worst sense of this word. No doubt these simple antics are funny for longhaired youngsters but to this German Count those silly gestures only emphasize, even more… his hieratic attitude.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must continue to be expressionless.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/