Matrimony's Speed Limit

A man must marry by noon or lose his inheritance. It's 11:50 a.m. and he can't find his fiancée.

This was produced and directed by pioneering female film maker Alice Guy-Blaché. It was produced by Solax Studios when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey at the beginning of the 20th century. That makes it doubly interesting -- the female director, and the fact it came out of New Jersey, which seems odd today.

One of only two of Guy-Blaché's films to survive out of her ouvre of more than 300, its preservation was initially financed by the Women's Film Preservation Fund upon its inauguration in 1995. I have no idea how you lose 298 or more films, but apparently this happens.

Ignore the previous comment - the Keaton film was much later.

A man does badly on Wall Street but refuses to borrow or take money from the woman he is engaged to, so she sends him a message seemingly from a law firm stating that his aunt has died but he must be married by 12 noon that day to be eligible to inherit her money. He makes several comic attempts to marry women who are at hand before marrying the lady who sent the letter just before noon.

Nice shots of suburban Fort Lee, NJ.

I like how the guy lays down in front of the car and motions for it to run him over near the end, when he believes he's not going to succeed in his quest to marry by noon to collect an inheritance. It's cool that it's the woman (Marian Swayne) who actually has the money in this relationship and is pulling the strings, and the guy is somewhat "steamrolled" into marriage, which director Alice Guy-Blaché cleverly shows us symbolically. She's a little heavy-handed in how often she shows us the clock, and there's also an unfortunate joke where as he searches desperately for any woman to marry him, he taps on a veiled woman's back, only to discover she's black, and then immediately reacts by running away. It's a small moment but reflects the miscegenation laws and widespread view of white superiority of the period, and is repugnant.

I'm not sure who first came up with the concept for the story line, whether that was Guy-Blaché or someone earlier, but it would certainly be repeated afterwards, e.g. just three weeks later, in the short 'Jane Marries,' and then in countless others over the years. You may also recognize it from Buster Keaton's film 'Seven Chances' in 1925, based on a play from 1916 - though it's sadly ironic that Keaton would also include a touch of racism with a stupid character in blackface. Just as in that film, if you can look past those painful moments, this is an amusing little short.

"Matrimony's Speed Limit" is a comedy from Alice Guy...a director not usually associated with comedies. The story is a very contrived one....and it was later re-used many times...and to its best in Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances".

When the story begins, Fraunie learns that he's lost much of his money in the stock market. So, he tells his girlfriend Marian that their engagement is off and she's free to marry a better man.

Soon, Fraunie receives a letter saying that his aunt has died AND he'll inherit her fortune IF he marries by noon. Considering it's almost noon when he learns this, it's not surprising that he's in a bind....and it's worse when he has trouble finding Marian.

This is a cute film but so much more could have been done with the story to build on the comedy and make the film more exciting. Still, for an early silent comedy, it's far better than most of the slapstick of the day....as most comedies in 1913 were more broad and involved a lot of kicking and gunfire for laughs!

I'm fond of the double meanings of such a title as Alice Guy's "Matrimony's Speed Limit," referring to both the car-speeding last-minute-rescue parody and the hurry to get hitched, so why not refer to a double meaning of "race" in my review headline. Because, as much as I enjoy making fun of the popular nickelodeon genre--D.W. Griffith being especially well known for such flicks as "The Girl and Her Trust" (1912)--there's also an example of an all-too-common and repugnant racist gag to ruin the fun. It's especially unfortunate given that Guy and her Solax studio also made an early and generally inoffensive "race film" with an all-African American cast, "A Fool and His Money" (1912), the year prior.

In this one, a man refuses to marry a wealthy heiress without being able to financially support them himself, so the woman sends him a telegram lying about him receiving an inheritance if he's married by noon. Cue a race-to-marry scenario similar to and predating Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances" (1925). The trick almost backfires as, pressed for time, the man looks to marry any woman--with the one exception of a veiled African-American woman. And this after he tries to manhandle another woman into marry him. This gag of recoiling at interracial coupling goes back at least to the Edison company's "What Happened in the Tunnel" (1903), and recently I saw it in another Edwin S. Porter film, "Jack the Kisser" (1907).

As for the last-minute-rescue film, it dates back to at least Pathé's "The Physician of the Castle" (1908) and was thereafter popularized by Griffith. Fellow female filmmaker Lois Weber made an especially innovative one, "Suspense" (1913). Nor was "Matrimony's Speed Limit" the only parody of the genre, as Keystone's "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life" (1913) demonstrates. Technically, these films were mainly remarkable for the advancement of rapid crosscutting. Ordinarily, the set-up was for a damsel-in-distress to be rescued by her beau, with the picture cutting back and forth between her to be imminently attacked by the baddies and the man or men racing by car or some other transportation to get there and save the day. Usually, modern forms of communication also mediated this rescue--the telegraph, telephone, or telegram as here.

Characteristically, Guy reverses the gender roles, having the man needing to be rescued in the form of being wed and the woman racing off in the automobile to save him, as well as controlling the narrative by initiating the plot with the telegram. By the end, the guy gives up and lies in front of oncoming traffic, which, you guessed it, turns out to be his sweetheart's car. The suicide joke comes full circle here after an opening shot where one might've thought he was going to jump out of a window due to his financial distress, and a steamroller is close behind the newlyweds' transport to drive the picture's particular marriage metaphor home.