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Voidsville Follies

Works featuring "male bonding" (5)

College Chums

Edwin S. Porter (director)
Edison (production)

Language: Silent, released in Dec 1907
Minutes: 11

Another Porter snoozer, posing as "comedy". Entirely filmed in one room, and it looks as if the camera was set up and then the photographer went off for a nap. The sole noteworthy feature here is the inventive animation of a phone call.

Featured elements:

: comedy; extended incident; gender-bender; identity mix-up; male bonding

Algie The Miner

Alice Guy-Blaché (director/producer)
Harry Schenck (director)
Edward Warren (director)
Billy Quirk (lead)
Solax (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Feb 1912
Minutes: 10

After the broad comedy of "Go West, young sissy", this switches midway into a tale of male bonding (or something like that). In less than a week Algie returns East to claim his bride (who loved him as an effeminate man, so probably will be disgusted with him as a Rough Rider), bringing along his newly bonded male (or something like that) who presumably will play an unspecified role in Algie`s marriage. Seems there is no consensus on who actually directed this - an ambiguity befitting this quirky work.

Featured elements:

: addiction; baptism of fire; comedy; cowboys; gender-bender; male bonding; modernism; prejudice; sexuality; zero to hero

Quo Vadis? [1913]

Enrico Guazzoni (director/writer)
Eugenio Bava (cinematographer)
Alessandro Bona (cinematographer)
Henryk Sienkiewicz (author)
Gustavo Serena (lead)
Amleto Novelli (lead)
Società Italiana Cines (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, Russian subtitles, released in Mar 1913
Minutes: 103

Maybe Rome wasn't built in a day, but it only took one night to burn it down (with the help of a few good men with torches), according to this elaborate tale of palace intrigue, divine intervention, and jungle fever in Nero's Rome.

Featured elements:

: corruption; death scene; execution; falsely accused; female bonding; forbidden love; heroic defender; historical drama; male bonding; manipulator; melodrama; patriarchy; persecution; prison; redemption; religion; rescue; revenge; Roman empire; romance; servitude; strongman; suicide; torture; treachery; unrequited love

The Rounders

Charles Chaplin (director/lead/writer)
Frank D. Williams (cinematographer)
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (lead)
Minta Durfee (lead)
Al St. John (lead)
Cecile Arnold (lead)
Keystone (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Sep 1914
Minutes: 13

Chappy Charbuckle again, this time in cahoots instead of in conflict. Essentially just a showcase for Chaplin's drunk act, it can be viewed as a spinoff from Mabel's Strange Predicament where the drunk act, though just a sideshow to the main story of Mabel's predicament, got the biggest laughs. But the side show drunk act was more extended (and much funnier) than here, where it is the main attraction: yet another case of spinoff failure.

Featured elements:

: abuse; boozy-woozy; chase; comedy; male bonding; slapstick

Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman

George Irving (director)
Harry B. Harris (cinematographer)
Anthony Paul Kelly (writer)
Eugene Wiley Presbrey (writer)
E.W. Hornung (author)
John Barrymore (lead)
Frank Morgan (lead)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Dec 1917
Minutes: 65

For any hardcore fan of suavecito-smooth, the first few minutes of Barrymore profiling is a fun ride. But it quickly gets old and repetitive. And any hope for mystery is dashed when it becomes apparent that every kid on the block knows that Raffles is "secretly" the Amateur Cracksman. And those who don't know, he reveals it to them. With a villain with no real commitment to skulking or skullduggery, and a story with none of the twists and turns of Fantomas flicks, there's nothing much to see here but the stereotypical American imitation of upper-class British.

Featured elements:

: antihero; crime; detective; gentleman thief; male bonding; servitude; unrequited love

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