Won in a Closet

If you are wondering how you can see "Won in a Closet", it currently is available to watch at the National Film Preservation Foundation's website. The reason they have it is that there is a section for films that were recently discovered in New Zealand--and this is one of them. As for me, I didn't like it very much--so much for me telling you about NFPF!

This film is a bit like a reworking of Romeo and Juliet--with Mabel Norman and Charles Avery playing the lovers. Mabel's father and Charles' mother are against the marriage--as are the neighbors. But, the prospective in-laws get locked in a closet together--and Mabel does everything to keep them inside, as she thinks it's a hobo hiding inside. The problem is that none of this really works due to supreme over-acting (even by Keystone Studio's standards!!). A few examples would include folks literally jumping off the car into the creek (they were supposed to fall but it's obvious they were jumping), LOTS of wild gesticulations when acting (particularly by the father) and the over-reliance upon pratfalls since the plot just wasn't very funny. Overdoing these scenes was not unusual for a Keystone film but this one takes it to new heights and had only one mild laugh....just one.

Similar to many Keystone films, and especially the Bangville Police. Most Sennett comedies were send ups or burlesques of someone or something. Here the cops, country people and even D.W. Griffith are being ridiculed. Mabel is clearly playing a Griffith heroine -- a beautiful girl, very pure, but a little bit silly. How often is Mabel depicted as someone who loves the most ridiculous of men -- she does so here, although it is usually the very odd Mack Sennett who gains her affections. Whether it is Mabel or some other actor that directs, the outcomes are always the same, as Sennett always supervised everything. There were no directors as we know them today.

Featuring Mabel Normand in a nonsense number. Her "ideal" was a laugh in himself and the numerous entanglements into which the love affair is precipitated prove very diverting. - The Moving Picture World, January 24, 1914

Won in a Cupboard (1914)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

This Keystone short was lost for many decades until a print turned up in 2010 in New Zealand of all places. Whenever a lost film is found it's reason for celebration even if the film in question is pretty bad, which is the case here. Mabel Normand and Charles Avery fall in love and the two want to get married but her father and his mother refuse. The parents end up trapped in a cupboard (actually a closet) when all chaos breaks loose. WON IN A CUPBOARD is a pretty boring movie but there's reason to celebrate it being discovered. This was the second film that Normand made as a director and since the first one is lost, this here is so far the earliest film buffs can see her work behind the camera. I thought there were a couple interesting shots to be found here including one where the two people discover one another. The scene has them walking towards the camera and while this was quite simple I still found it to be good. What's not so good is pretty much everything else. As a "comedy" this thing is downright bad because there's not a single scene where I actually laughed. The entire thing just seems so forced that you can't help but find the characters annoying and not a bit charming. Another problem is that the entire second half of the picture just doesn't work at all (not to mention the poor shape some of it is in). Fans of Normand will want to see this for its historic importance but all others should start somewhere else.

This film was lost and only recently found in New Zealand and restored in 2010. I watched it on the National Film Preservation Foundation's website.

The first half of the film looks good. Unfortunately, the second half has many badly deteriorated shots.

There are a few good reasons for cinephiles to watch this. First it is the earliest example of Mabel directing a film that we have (actually her second film). Second, she looks absolutely gorgeous here. There are a couple of medium-close shots of her, quite unusual for 1914. It is easy to see why Sennett and others would fall in love with her.

This film was released two weeks before Chaplin's first film "Kid Auto Races." It seems quite possible that Chaplin was watching her make this film when he first arrived at Keystone. They starred together in their first film, "Mable's Strange Predicament" just six weeks after this. There is a "Tramp" in the film and the film style and motifs does bare a resemblance to a number of Chaplin's early films.

Apparently Edgar Kennedy is in the film, but I did not spot him. Hank Mann, who played the boxer in the brilliant boxing scene in Chaplin's "City Lights" (Chaplin,1931) is one of two "cut-ups" who fight with Mabel and her boyfriend.

The second part of the film with Mabel's mother and her sheriff boyfriend being trapped in a closet is a little weird. Bodies are sent tripping and flying against and over each other at a frantic pace and a Western version of the Keystone Cops appear.

While not anything particularly great, there are a few chuckles still here for Mabel Norman fans.