A Rainy Knight

A Rainy Knight (1925)

** (out of 4)

As with a lot of Mack Sennett two-reelers, this one here is basically two films rolled into one. The first portion deals with a couple trying to get to work but they're having a problem finding a place to park, which eventually leads to a fight. The second half has the man running into a beautiful woman and being forced into a cabin together, which isn't going to sit well with either of their significant others. A RAINY KNIGHT is a mildly entertaining film but there just wasn't enough laughs to make it worth sitting through unless you're like me and just like watching every film you can. Raymond McKee was actually pretty good in the lead role and I thought he displayed a rather good comic timing. It certainly didn't help that the screenplay didn't give him much to work with but I still really enjoyed him and would like to see him in something better. The best part of the film would have to be the first sequence as McKee keeps trying to find a place to park and each time he gets one something will happen to cause him to lose it. The second half doesn't feature anything that I enjoyed too much, although the sequence where the beauty is stripping was well handled.

This Mack Sennett comedy is a bit different in that it's more of a situation comedy than a bit of slapstick. While there are certainly gags, the plot seems a bit more important here--and that's not such a bad thing.

A man and his fiancée are trying to get to work on time, but getting a parking place is seriously difficult. Eventually, they do get to work--but only after the man (Raymond McKee) ends up blackening another man's eye (though this guy did have it coming). The guy ends up being a big client--and fortunately Raymond hides out until he leaves.

Later, Raymond meets up with a lady in distress and they end up spending the night together--even though both he and the lady have fiancés. In fact, it turns out the lady is the boss' girl! But what Raymond doesn't know is that this lady is actually carrying on with another man--the guy whose eye was blackened earlier in the film. What will become of all this? While there are some laughs here and there, as I said before this is more of a sit-com. Not brilliant but enjoyable.

Mack Sennett had been the King of Comedy for a decade, but his audience had remained largely unchanged. His stuff played well in the small towns of the countryside but if the big critics liked them, they didn't let the news get into the newspapers.

Given the changes of the 1920s, the movie audience had changed. There was now a large, middle class audience and they wanted something that looked more real. They wanted people who looked like them and plots that made sense. Sennett had already tapped into this vein with his features for Mabel Normand, but he was ready to try for it in his short subjects too. So director Lloyd Bacon, one of the Warner Brothers' workhorse directors in the 1930s, directed this one with much more verisimilitude than you'd expect from the studio that was also producing SUPER-HOOPER-DYNE LIZZIES. There are several scenes which are not only funny, they are also charming -- the one in which Raymond McKee has rescued Eugenia Gilbert and she changes out of her wet clothes behind a backlit sheet is excellent.

Sennett would have his staff continue in this vein later in the "Smith Family" saga, again with McKee in the lead. Although he is remembered for his wild slapstick, he was always on the lookout for new audiences to conquer.