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Voidsville Follies

Works from Essanay (6)

Broncho Billy And The Greaser

Broncho Billy Anderson (director/lead/writer)
Lee Willard (lead)
Marguerite Clayton (lead)
Essanay (production)

Language: Silent, released in Oct 1914
Minutes: 17

Broncho Billy weighs into the debate on multiculturalism. Definitely not starring Jerry Mathers as "The Greaser".

Featured elements:

: action; comedy; cowboys; ethnic stereotype; fighting; heroic defender; home invasion; rescue; revenge; white flesh lust; white supremacy

The Tramp

Charles Chaplin (director/lead/writer)
Harry Ensign (cinematographer)
Edna Purviance (lead)
Essanay (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Apr 1915
Minutes: 27

Seemingly endless loop of the same type of slapstick that was done with much more enthusiasm in Chaplin's earlier Keystone reels with Mabel Normand.

Featured elements:

: alienation; antihero; bookends; comedy; fighting; heroic defender; home invasion; pathos; slapstick; tramp; treachery

Burlesque On Carmen

Charles Chaplin (director/lead/writer)
Roland Totheroh (cinematographer)
Prosper Mérimée (author)
Edna Purviance (lead)
Essanay (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Dec 1915
Minutes: 31

Maybe not the funniest, but the silly-walks, patty-cakes, hairy-eyeballs, and Ali-shuffle make this a catalog of creative nuttiness.

Featured elements:

: Bizet's Carmen; catfight; comedy; dance; death scene; femme fatale; fighting; forsaken; metatheatre; parody; slapstick; tramp

Sherlock Holmes [1916]

Arthur Berthelet (director)
William Postance (director/lead)
H.S. Sheldon (writer)
William Gillette (author/lead)
Arthur Conan Doyle (author)
Ernest Maupain (lead)
Marjorie Kay (lead)
Edward Fielding (lead)
Stewart Robbins (lead)
Grace Reals (lead)
Mario Majeroni (lead)
Essanay (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in May 1916
Minutes: 115

This film exists as supporting evidence for three well-established postulates in film theory:

Early attempts to bring stage successes to silent film were disastrous. Here we waste nearly two hours watching paint dry.
A superhero without a worthy nemesis is a superdud. Moriarty doesn't enter until 45 minutes in, so over a third of the film is just Watson, Sherlock, and his little concubine Billy.
Sherlock Holmes is a boring smug prick.

Featured elements:

: child labor; Chinatown; crime; criminal mastermind; detective; female avenger; fighting; heroic defender; kiddie act; melodrama; rescue; revenge; servitude; sidekick

Max Wants a Divorce

Max Linder (director/lead/writer)
Martha Mansfield (lead)
Francine Larrimore (lead)
Mathilde Comont (lead)
Essanay (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Mar 1917
Minutes: 22

In his second US-made film, Max arranges to have an affair in order to get a divorce, to fulfill the requirement for inheriting a fortune. The broad humor in the psychiatrist office is typical of an Essanay production, but alien to Linder's style.

Featured elements:

: comedy; farce; identity mix-up

Max In A Taxi

Max Linder (director/lead/writer)
Martha Mansfield (lead)
Mathilde Comont (lead)
Essanay (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Apr 1917
Minutes: 20

Max is forced to get a job as a cabbie (in the final 7 minutes of this 20-minute film). His third US-made film, this seems to be missing the opening scene in the restaurant, that's described at maxlinder.de/maxinataxi.htm. What's here is more slapstick and action, less story and character.

Featured elements:

: automobile; boozy-woozy; comedy; slapstick; suicide

head city has waived all rights to all work here that's not stolen from somewhere else.

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