Topic: Mabel’s Dramatic Career (1913) - Sennett/Normand/Sterling/Arbuckle

[metaldams]

      Amazing to think after all of these reviews, I don’t believe I’ve ever done a Keystone era Sennett short.  Never a Mabel Normand film.  Never a Ford Sterling film.  Well folks, that ends now, because this time around it’s 1913’s MABEL’S DRAMATIC CAREER.  In simple terms, the plot is things don’t work out between Mack Sennett and Mabel.  Mabel goes to Hollywood and after the girl Sennett dumps Mabel for rejects him, Mack goes to the movie and sees Mabel on screen.  That’s the simple story, but it’s what they do with it that’s so fun.

      Perhaps I’m devolving as I get older, but these past few years, I’ve developed a great appreciation for lack of subtlety, and these characters in the film lack it in spades.  The emotional maturity of five year olds.  Mabel gets yelled at and drops dishes as a reaction.  She chases people around with weapons at rejection.  Now Ms. Normand was a real woman in the realm of slapstick comedy….or, (clears throat), excuse me, farce comedy.  Not one of these pretty faces who does nothing, she gets into the spirit of things and I love her for it.  Of course she had an excessive life and left us way too soon, but in her youth, she was always fun to watch.  Could be the sweet girl or the slapstick diva and in this short, she’s the latter.  God bless Mabel.

      Then there is Mack Sennett himself.  Yes, that’s him as the leading man.  While mostly known for being a producer, he was an actor in the very early Keystone shorts as well as at Biograph before this.  Sennett’s comic character here is about as stereotypical country bumpkin as one can get.  The slumped shoulders, the slacked jaw - you almost want to wipe the drool off his chin.  If there were a caption bubble above his head, it would say, “Duh!?”  He overreacts to things as well, my favorite being when he faces rejection, he throws and breaks a glass tea cup at the girl before putting her over his knee and spanking her.  This ain’t real life, the the world of Keystone comedy, circa 1913.  God bless Mack. 

      Then there’s Ford Sterling.  Ford played a parody of the typical Victorian era villain. If Sennett had a “Duh!?” caption bubble above his head, Sterling’s would be “Curses!”  The type who leers, points at the audience, pantomimes the action he is about to do, which is usually the equivalent of tying his lady to the railroad tracks.  Here, he’s doing his act in the context of a film within a film - so SHERLOCK, JR. was not the first.  Sennett is in the audience thinking the harm he’s doing to Mabel is real.  Back to that five year old mentality again, Sennett just takes out a gun and randomly shoots in the air.  One of those special guns that appears regularly in early Sennett films that have an unlimited supply of bullets.  Oh, and yes folks, that is Roscoe Arbuckle in the audience as the annoyed spectator.  God bless him, and Sterling too.

      So this is a long overdue review into the world of Keystone Sennett.  It’s not for everyone, Mr. Walter Kerr was not a fan, for example and since I read his book before seeing most of these Keystone shorts, he left me with a bad impression.  To each their own, but I’ve grown a great appreciation for this level of chaos over the years.  How about you?

[Umbrella Sam]

Aiming to get to CITY LIGHTS tomorrow, but I figured I’d check this one out first. Regarding the change in perception of Keystone films, my experience is the opposite of yours. I actually quite enjoyed the Keystone style the first few times I saw those types of shorts. As time went on, though, I did begin to realize more and more just how repetitive they could be, as well as the lack of any real coherent story and characters. I’m not saying that these shorts have to all have perfectly flowing stories or anything, but with Keystone, it often feels like they’re just taking multiple random ideas and throwing them together without any kind of direction.

As far as MABEL’S DRAMATIC CAREER goes, the highlight for me was probably seeing Roscoe Arbuckle playing against type as the annoyed guy sitting next to Mack Sennett at the theater. He does a really good job, I actually kind of would have liked to see him play more of these types of roles. Mabel herself does a good job with the scene where she’s chasing everyone, too. I actually haven’t seen too much of Mabel’s work; I’ve seen MICKEY and THE EXTRA GIRL, but I’ve seen very few of her Keystone shorts. I know she was really popular during this era and you can see why in that chase scene; she was a very expressive person and one who clearly put a lot of effort into her performances. I appreciate that, even if I don’t think it always works.

Mack Sennett is super annoying here. At least Mabel takes an occasional moment to calm down when she goes over the top, but Sennett feels like he’s literally trying everything he can to upstage everyone around him, and it doesn’t work. I’ve seen a few of his early shorts before Keystone and while I didn’t think he was particularly good in them, he at least felt like he was given some proper direction. That’s not the case here, probably because he himself was the director. Ford Sterling’s fine, it is interesting seeing the action of the film play out at the same time as the people in the theater are reacting. It almost feels like a way to encourage actual audience members to see it again, so they could focus on one different aspect at each viewing.

In the end, pretty standard Keystone fare; some fun stuff, some annoying stuff, it’s about what I expected.

[Paul Pain]

If you like silent comedy and at least respect the names Normand, Sterling, Sennett, and Arbuckle, then there's plenty to see and enjoy here.  What I particularly enjoy here is how so much ground is covered in just 13 minutes,  This one was spontaneous and spastic even for Keystone standards

I never knew Mack was an actual actor in his own right aside from his appearances as extras in his films, and he's a fine one.  Imagine him and Al St. John together... no, don't, that's too much energy for a closed system to handle.

Mabel is cute and dangerous.  Roscoe is fat and dangerous,.  Mack is dumb and dangerous.  Ford is wicked and dangerous.

The twist at the end was a perfect comeuppance for Mack's character.  The man just gets more and more self-inflicted slashing wounds, and then at the end gets a heaping of salt poured in them.

[metaldams]

The thing about the Keystone/Sennett stuff, as charmingly primitive as it can be at times, even there you will find relative growth.  The more mature Chaplin stuff at Keystone as well as some of the Fatty and Mabel films have worlds of difference later on Vs a 1913 Ford Sterling vehicle.  I actually chose a 1913 style film on purpose for this round.