When Knights Were Cold

While most of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival is devoted to screening films preserved with the aim of being in their best shape since their initial releases, this year's online version ended with this incomplete slapstick short, "When Knights Were Cold," starring Stan Laurel. Missing the first of its two reels, it's absurdly comical in its opening with knights, with names made out of puns, riding fake, costume horses in a pretend medieval setting. As Rob Stone claims in his notes for Pordenone, there is a Monty Python quality to the parody. Later, swashbuckling sword fights are lampooned, as is the smooching with the damsel-in-distress, including as Laurel lays one on one of his male nemeses. There's also some sheet music shown for a musical ragtime gag during the wedding scene and a film-specific gag involving substitution-splices. It's all quite silly and rather amusing. It reminds me a lot of the same year's "Robin Hood" starring Douglas Fairbanks, although the film could just be a general parody of such fairy tales and swashbucklers.