Fatty et Mabel à l'opéra

A two-reel farce comedy subject which finds Ford Sterling again with his former associates. Fatty and Mabel. The men take their ladies to the theater. Fatty and Mabel having been married but a short time before. Ford then lures his corpulent friend into a restaurant where they wine and dine Ford's friends, to the neglect of Fatty's wife. When Mabel appears there is trouble. A divorce follows and then both repent and they marry again. This is a breezy number, but escapes anything of a decidedly risque character. The photography is very fine. - The Moving Picture World, March 13, 1915

That Little Band of Gold finds Roscoe Arbuckle newly married, but henpecked, living with both wife and mother-in-law. He's far from ready to settle down as a night at the opera where he winds up taking both his women with him proves.

The wife in this Mack Sennett feature is Mabel Normand. Said that both would have their careers end in scandal and die so young. Mabel has little to do in this film, but look winsome and hurt.

Watching Arbuckle perform he reminded me very much of Jackie Gleason when he would do his Reginald Van Gleason character. Same kind of loutish behavior even for one in a tuxedo. Mabel was the ever suffering Alice Kramden like wife, bringing him down to earth.

That Little Band of Gold was an interesting insight into one of the characters that Arbuckle created.

Mabel Normand, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, and Ford Sterling make this short comedy rather amusing, despite only the sketchiest of plots. The gag material allows all three to get the chance to use their slapstick abilities and to have plenty of screen time. There are also a couple of moments when the story turns ever-so-slightly poignant, not for long, but enough to suggest that there is some depth behind the slapstick story.

The plot has 'Fatty' as a recently married husband, who has already begun to neglect his wife (Mabel). When Sterling, as Arbuckle's disreputable friend, happens on the scene, the domestic problems burst into conflict and slapstick. Most of it is pretty amusing, and the material is generally pretty good. Certainly it's the kind of thing that Arbuckle and Sterling, in particular, can do effortlessly.

Normand has fewer comic moments, but she makes her character very sympathetic, and amidst the comedy, she is able to communicate the hurt feelings caused by a carousing husband. She is also both funny and engaging in the finale. It's a pretty good movie overall.

That Little Band of Gold (1915)

** (out of 4)

Fatty and Mabel Normand are married but after the wedding he starts going out every night with his friends. Mabel finally demands that he takes her to the opera but once there he runs off with another woman for some drinks. Like many of Arbunkle's two-reelers, this one here spends about fifteen-minutes building everything up for the ending but none of it is very funny. Some of these two-reelers are very weird because it seems that they are never going for laughs and there's just way too much dead time before we get down to the action. Charley Chase can be spotted playing a telephone operator.

One of the excellent and innovative comedies that Roscoe Arbuckle directed and starred in during his last couple of years at Keystone. Although for his own starring vehicles for Comique he retreated to simpler plotting and camera work, in these, he experiments with lighting, camera movement. elaborate plotting and fairly elaborate gag sequences, as opposed to his artful toss-them-off technique in his Comique vehicles -- but then, he didn't have Buster Keaton to play against at Keystone.

In this one he is well supported, as usual, by Mabel Normand. Ford Sterling, in his Dutch Comic makeup, snarls his way amusingly through the piece also. In fact, Sterling steals the entire movie.... or perhaps Roscoe lets him have it.