Matrimony's Speed Limit

A ticker-tape spells out a man's doom: he's lost his investments. His girlfriend, who is very well off, offers him her finances, but he won't have it. A telegram is sent that he is due an inheritance if he is married before noon. She rushes out in her car with a priest in tow to meet him, while he tries proposing to every woman in sight.

It's an amusing comedy, not uproariously funny, but cute. "Marry by a certain time, or forfeit your inheritance" was probably an old plot device even when this was made, and yet it's still around. Here, though, it's the woman's attempt to save the pride of the man she loves. A bit embarrassing that he didn't think to call her when he got the telegram - I don't know if she'd be happy to learn he tried proposing to everyone he encountered.

Fraunie Fraunholz's stock speculations have turned out terribly. He tries to break off his engagement to Marian Swayne -- what will they live on? -- but she has faith in him. She offers him her savings, but he won't take them. But Miss Swayne will not be thwarted. She sends him a telegram that a rich relative has died and he will inherit, but only if he is married very soon: in twelve minutes, to be precise.

Good thing this is a 14-minute movie. That gives him leeway. He asks various women to marry him, but none take him seriously. Meanwhile, Miss Swayne is on her way.

You can look on this as a feminist tract by the first woman director and the first woman to head her own studio. I think it's a fairly funny short making fun of improvident men and the women who love them.

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.

I have to disagree with the other reviewer--I found "Matrimony's Speed Limit" fun and breezy, even if the plot has been recycled a million times. What makes this version different (at least to me) is that the girl dupes her boyfriend into marriage by sending him a fake telegram, and then ends up giving him all of her own money. The ending is particularly charming, with the new husband realizing the deception and the girl wheedling him into compliance.

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.