Hold Your Breath

Being paired with the epidemic-related short "Sailor Beware" (1927), also produced by Al Christie, for the Kansas Silent Film Festival, and with a title of "Hold Your Breath," I though I might be in for more contagious laughter, but it turns out the title alludes to the daring of a young woman (Dorothy Devore) scaling the outside of a building chasing after a monkey and being pursued herself by police. See, she's been framed for stealing Queen Catherine the Great's bracelet, but the monkey is the real culprit, so to prove her innocence... well, you get the idea. If you enjoyed "Safety Last!" (1924) and wonder what if a female comedian replaced Harold Lloyd, then "Hold Your Breath" is sure-fire, released only one month after the Lloyd vehicle and featuring genuinely amusing comic timing and impressive effects for the seeming stunts in the same vein.

As for the picture leading up to this climax, "Hold Your Breath" isn't as funny or thrilling. The surviving print I saw was also incomplete, being cutdown for Kodascope home projectors, and as I doubt they nixed any of the exciting climax, that means there was probably even more of this lackluster plot buildup, or maybe the missing footage fleshed out the sick war-veteran brother, who otherwise serves a weak and decidedly unfunny subplot here. Regardless, once Devore, as Mabel, fills in for him during his leave of absence from work due to illness, the action picks up, including an airplane crashing on Broadway, pilot intact, and her being accidently dragged in a carriage by a car. An African-American character, hired by Mabel's fiancé to follow her to keep her safe, is also amusing in raising sympathy for his tired feet in the madcap chasing while the 1924 silent film, for a pleasant surprise, doesn't resort to offensive stereotypes. Even a shot where a door man refuses to let him follow Dorothy inside the building is photographed from a long shot and with no apparent attempt to make it a comedic situation.

Meanwhile, our heroine reporter crossdresses in the uniform of a male bellhop, to get an interview, which also conveniently provides her pants for the cliffhanger stunts, and demonstrates that she can do just as well whatever Lloyd's "Glasses" character can do--until she decides that she'll retire to "wife-ing," promptly putting an end to the movie. To top it off, fellow comedian Max Davidson makes a cameo as a "businessman" selling chairs and telescopes to bystander spectators awaiting Mabel's fall from the skyscraper. This is a fun one.

Only the second half of this film survives, alas; but what we do have is a delight. The elfin, round-faced Dorothy Devore is charming and nimble as a would-be reporter who after finally persuading sour-faced millionaire Tully Marshall to consent to an interview finds herself accused of stealing a priceless bracelet actually snatched by an escaped monkey that then made itself scarce through the window it had entered through.

Miss Devore spends the rest of the film clambering up and down the side of the building (getting her face licked by a dog at one point) in pursuit of the monkey while herself being pursued by the house detective and a cop. Through a combination of Devore's own agility and superb photography and editing, the sequence is easily the equal of the equivalent sequence that concluded Harold Lloyd's 'Safety Last' the previous year, especially as it also includes equally funny activity back down on the pavement by Max Davidson and other onlookers.

I don't think it is quite so much a question of what survives being just the "second half" of the film but rather an abbreviated Kodascope home-view version (two-thirds the length of the original). It is a very pleasant unassuming comedy with a mild satirical note.

The fashion for high jinks on high buildings does not originate with Safety Last or with Lloyd but rather with Larry Semon in two or three comedies of 1918-19 (Dunces and Dangers, Humbugs and Husbands and Traps and Tangles) . Lloyd took up the challenge later in 1919 with Look Out Below. But undoubtedly Safety Last clinched the matter and by this time everybody but everybody was at it, so Devore is in good company that includes Buster and Tige, Farina from Our Gang and even the chimp Snooky. But it is true, as the other reviewer observes, that this example is particularly elaborate and particularly well done.

One very interesting aspect of the film, quite lacking in the films of Semon, Lloyd et al, is the extended political parallel drawn between the precarious acrobatics and the socio-economic crisis that was beginning to effect the US. Not only is the entire film about the difficulties of finding employment but the various sideshows - particularly the excellent Max Davidson as the opportunistic salesman - tend also in the same sense. It is not therefore just Devore who is haning by her fingernails.

African American Douglas Carter does not incidentally so much play "a black boy" as suggested in the cast-list here as a black "boy" in the condescending racist sense of the word. He is a fully grown man and has an important role in the film as the man sent by Devore's boyfriend to keep a watch on her, a role which he plays extremely well and it is an absolute disgrace that he was not credited.