La culotte magique de Fatty

Have you ever gone to a fancy dress ball and had your trousers suddenly vanish? Fatty Arbuckle has. What will happen as the evening progresses? Will more articles of his clothing disappear?

This is a good story and is well-acted, particularly by Arbuckle and Minta Durfee, his real-life wife. Laughs never cease as gag after gag ensues. This is another magical film from the folks at Keystone.

In this comedy short, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle gets a fair number of laughs from a simple idea. He has to get himself ready for a formal occasion in the evening, and he finds himself encountering a series of unexpected difficulties in getting himself dressed. There aren't really any big laughs, but the movie is usually moderately amusing, and Arbuckle's timing is pretty good. The version of "Fatty's Suitless Day" (also called "Fatty's Magic Pants") that aired recently also had a catchy musical score that matched the action nicely.

While this isn't one of the best comedies of the era, it's worth a look.

I saw this Arbuckle short on DVD as the WH Productions reissue, "Fatty's Suitless Days." Fatty is competing with a young Charley Chase, sans moustache, for the affections of Minta Durfee, who in real life would become Mrs. Roscoe Arbuckle. Fatty wants to take her to a dance, but he doesn't own a suit. After some bickering with his mom at her washboard, he steals Charley's dress suit and takes Minta to the dance. Charley arrives at the dance, opens fire on Fatty with his pistol in a scene of gun violence which shocked my modern sensibilities. (Not really, but it's interesting to consider such scenes in the modern context.) To me, most of the talk of Chaplin and the art of pathos is pretentious and overbearing, not that there's anything wrong with that. Either way, this Fatty Arbuckle short has pathos. He loses his suit, and is led off by a police officer wearing nothing but a barrel. (It was a Keystone short, but the cop was not a "Keystone Kop.") I suppose I have to add that the ending is a double-dose of pathos given the way Roscoe's fortunes ended in real life.

If you are a real fan of silent comedy, you will like this one. It is mindless Arbuckle fun. I still get chills when I watch these glimpses of history, this one filmed over nine decades ago. This one shows its age, but that's part of its charm.

If you want to understand your wife, you need to understand her parents. If you want to understand movies, you need to rummage around in these old things. Mack Sennett is key.

This little project is unimportant, except in context.

Guns as funny. Pantless men at parties as funny. Dispirited fat men as funny. Pretty girls as worth any risk – well, that's a timeless universal.

But here was the funniest man in movies before Chaplin, with his wife, doing his funniest bits. There's little more important in the root of the food chain.

So in a way, you won't have any fun with this until you see almost anything afterward that has physical comedy. Then the mirrors in your visual memory will reflect back to this stuff that you've hung in there; and you'll find yourself chuckling deeper.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Fatty's Suitless Day (1915)

** (out of 4)

Fatty needs a new suit to go dancing but this just leads to trouble. Again, not too many laughs but there are a few cute moments to keep the thing going. Charley Chase plays the rival but both men have better shorts out there.

Fatty's Spooning Day (1915)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A flirt (Fatty Arbuckle) gets thrown behind bars and must explain to his wife. A few laughs including Fatty getting beaten up by his wife but other than that the film is pretty flat.