Fatty's Tintype Tangle

Y'know, usually silent movies drive me a little batty. Charlie Chaplin makes me crazy -- he had to do every joke twice and he's too busy making a social statement. Buster Keaton is more interested in showing off the stunt than making you laugh. Harold Lloyd's character always seems a little too sad to be really funny.

But there's something about Fatty Arbuckle that just works for me. He's just silly and he doesn't seem to go over the top just to show off. Most important, I think, is that his characters don't seem lonely the way Chaplin Lloyd and Keaton's do.

Whatever, the reason, Arbuckle meets the real test...he makes me laugh more than the others. Particularly in this film, which has a nice little narrative and, like most really good silents, needs almost no text cards between scenes.

You know, I really like this film. It's got a great story, very good acting, and some genuinely funny moments. The story deals with a misunderstanding generated by an itinerant photographer in the park. He photographs Fatty and Louise together in a totally innocent embrace without their knowledge. When they (and their spouses) find out about this seemingly not so innocent tintype, all hell breaks loose! Edgar thinks Fatty is having an affair with his wife! Out come the guns! Can Fatty really outrun a speeding bullet? Arbuckle is also ably at the helm of this fine farce comedy. Good acting plus a fast-paced story add up to a highly amusing and enjoyable two-reeler that is still guaranteed to get laughs after all these years.

Once this Keystone comedy finishes with the setup and gets going, it has some very good sequences with some good laughs. Roscoe Arbuckle is good throughout, and once Louise Fazenda and Edgar Kennedy arrive on the scene, the three of them work well together in performing the comic routines and in keeping up a manic pace.

The first several minutes focus on the home life of Arbuckle's henpecked husband character, who is particularly tormented by his mother-in-law. It makes the point quickly, and probably then spends too much time driving the point home. For the most part, the only things that work well in this stretch of the movie are Arbuckle's occasional gags with his hat and other props. Otherwise, scaling this sequence down to just a minute or two would have been more than adequate to set up the rest of it.

Once Arbuckle storms out of the house and gets involved with another couple played by Fazenda and Kennedy, it picks up considerably. Things start with a chance photograph that puts Arbuckle and Fazenda in an apparently compromising position, and for the rest of the time the movie just keeps building onto this setup, getting quite a bit out of this plus a couple of added plot devices.

The three stars play their parts well, with Arbuckle as the harried and desperate man wrongly accused, Kennedy as the angry, jealous husband, and Fazenda as the panic-stricken wife trying desperately to help. Their escapades make use of a variety of settings and props. The last half of the movie is pretty good, and it's worth waiting for a few minutes to get to it.

Fatty's Tintype Tangle (1915)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Originally shown in two parts, this Keystone comedy clocks in just under 30-minutes and is quite ambitious for its type. The film has Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle playing an abused man constantly being harassed by his mother-in-law. After getting some courage from alcohol, he finally manages to put her in her place but when he goes to walk it off he has an innocent encounter with a woman (Louise Fazenda) and this doesn't sit too well with her angry husband (Edgar Kennedy). FATTY'S TINTYPE TANGLE has a lot of scenes that just drag on and aren't all that funny but whenever the film does get a joke right it's usually pretty big. There are a few highlights scattered throughout the rather long running time but one of the best has to be the sequence where Fatty gets drunk and just starts destroying the house before ripping into the mother-in-law. I thought these scenes were rather hilarious and especially due to how animated Arbuckle gets in his anger. Another funny bit happens towards the end of the picture when Arbuckle is hiding out in a shower when the jealous husband turns on some hot water. Needless to say, Arbuckle really does a very good job here as do the supporting players. Fans of silent slapstick are certainly going to enjoy this film as there are plenty of laughs. One just wishes that some of the dryer moments had a few more comedy bits.

Roscoe Arbuckle loves wife Norma Nicholls, and is oppressed b mother-in-law Mai Wells. When he is innocently caught by a tintype photographer in a compromising picture with. Louise Fazenda, her husband, Edgar Kennedy, tells Roscoe to get out of town. Which he does, for a day, during which Miss Nichols rents a spare room to the Kennedys.

Arbuckle clearly encouraged his players to mug it up, so Miss Fazenda seems unacquainted with the concept of stairs, and Kennedy dresses like a woolly Merry Man; well, he's supposed to be Australian. Roscoe fills the time with small bits which keep you smiling, and the Keystone Kops show up.