Works featuring "sports" (11)

Love Unconquerable (Amour tenace)

Max is spurned by the father of his love, but still he persists. Note that Max briefly revisits his 1907 debut film, "The Unskillful Skater".

The Water Nymph

Seems like some footage may be missing because in the first scene Sennett gives Mabel a ring and a kiss, in the next scene he's crying with suitcase in hand, surrounded by his parents - but the reason is never revealed. In the next scene he tells Mabel to vamp the father - again, no reason given. Seems possible that this is a story of forbidden love, with the vamp used as blackmail. But this is never even hinted at - and Keystone did not build its comedic reputation on subtlety. So this ends up as mainly a showcase for Mabel's diving stunts, with help from Ford Sterling's tits-up-butt-out shtick.

The Compleat Sportsman (Max Linder pratique tous les sports)

To wed a rich American, Max must beat competing suitors in sports.

Starts out looking like a gender switch of the 1904 How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns. Like that earlier film, this also is long, with few laughs. Basically, it is an excuse for Linder to show off his skills - he looks like he could have been an early Douglas Fairbanks.

Interesting that one of the suitors appears to be a dark-skinned non-European (who moves like a real boxer), since such a marriage was illegal in 30 of the 48 US states at that time. Perhaps that is why the film's IMDB entry gives no indication of a US release. But, according to Wikipedia, there was never any racial law about marriage in France, and all administrative prohibitions were canceled by a law in 1833.