A Movie Star

This short feature has some pretty good comedy that is a bit more understated than Mack Sennett's usual fare, and it is also an entertaining self-parody of the movie industry (as it existed in the 1910's - but surely there are close parallels in any era). It has a film-within-a-film setup that works pretty well, with Mack Swain as "A Movie Star" watching one of his own films. The parallel action comes across well most of the time, and it is worth watching the audience closely for the details of their responses to the screen action. It seems a little more structured than many of Sennett's earlier films, but it also has a good dose of the roughneck slapstick for which he was usually known. This one's worth a look for anyone who likes silent comedies.

Poor Mack Swain was surrounded by dozens of Steve McQueens, scene-stealing hams -- but who were thoroughly delightful in their hamminess.

Swain was a good actor in more than 150 movies, many of them quite short.

Here his character even gets a few minutes to show he was a good cowboy, riding a horse surprisingly well.

His movie star character, just by being a movie star, draws female fans by the score, and as they all sit in the theatre to watch his latest opus, they ooh and ahh at his on-screen character, then do it some more after the film ends, ingratiating the theater manager but enraging the male companions of those females.

The movie's ending should not be surprising, but it's still funny, and the short time we've been watching seems all the shorter because it is funny, charmingly funny.

Swain is not exactly the hero type, and maybe that makes the character he plays even funnier. He is the only performer here who might be known today but, though he's been gone since 1935, he is known, at least among aficionados of early motion pictures. Please, if you can, do grab the opportunity to watch "A Movie Star."

Unlike many of Mack Swain's comedies for Keystone Pictures, he doesn't play Ambrose but an actor named Handsome Jack. His latest movie is about to premier at a nickelodeon and he's sure to be there to see it...and get noticed for his wonderful acting. However, as the film progresses, not everyone in the audience is impressed with the hammy actor...much to the annoyance of Jack...and Jack's wife.

As you watch the picture, you'll likely notice that not only was a musical score later added to the movie during the talking picture era, but sound effects as well. They were likely added in the early 1930s...and this was a common practice with silent shorts. Fortunately, the print quality is quite good for a film this old, as many are severely degraded or completely disintegrated over time.

I liked this film more than the usual Keystone comedy of the era. Why? Well, too many relied on slapstick for laughs. This literally meant the actors would punch, kick and shoot at each other for little reason...and the audiences loved it. This sort of simplistic filmmaking didn't last long, as audiences did tire of the antics and wanted more, such a plots, from the comedy shorts. Here, there is violence at the end...but it is earned and doesn't dominate the film or take the place of plot.

With his rather unique and off-beat appearance, Mack Swain, with his thick moustache and hairlick that reached down to his eyebrows, hardly looks like the image most people conjure up when they think of a movie star. But then, these were the early days of the movies.

Mack Swain as Big Hearted Jack is making an appearance at a premier of his new film. It's not a movie premiere as it existed even ten years later, but instead it is a primitive impromptu affair. Jack just sits in the front row with the audience. The women are enthralled by Jack, but the men - not so much. A Shakesperean actor in the audience is open in his disdain.

The film within the film is a western that has Jack's sweetheart getting her head turned by a city slicker, an Indian attack, a wild shoot out, and Jack riding in to save the day. All while Big Hearted Jack discusses the film with the women in the audience and encourages them to clap at the right spots. All the while, Harry McCoy labors away in the corner as a one man orchestra and sound effects man.

The end is quite a surprise for the ladies in the audience when the truth about their hero raises their ire. I'll let you watch and find out what that truth is.

For 1916 this is a very subtle piece of comedy and a look at what an average movie patron might encounter and what an average movie theater might have as far as technology. It really is cleverly done.

Keystone comedies aren't very funny anymore, and they were often crude even for their day, but Mack Sennett could be an intelligent filmmaker in addition to being an interesting businessman. He was dividing out his responsibilities in actually making the films by now, transforming Keystone into a more typical and efficient movie studio, but what makes "A Movie Star" remarkable can be seen in other Sennett comedies, such as "Mabel's Dramatic Career" (1913). That is, Sennett helped introduced self-referential humor to screen comedy--films that poke fun at themselves, other movies, movie-making and the other aspects surrounding the cinema experience--adding new dimensions and depth to the comedies.

"A Movie Star" isn't uproariously funny, but the comedy is thankfully not the completely unrefined and unsubtle knockabout slapstick one finds in other Keystone fare, especially the earliest ones. This short satirizes the egotistical movie star (well played by Mack Swain), their daft fans and the cheap nickelodeons. There's also a jealous boyfriend of a swooning idolater and a stodgy stage actor, which serves as a humorous antagonism to Swain's character, as all of them sit in the crowded, dinky theatre to view Swain's film-within-a film, "Big Hearted Jack": a Western romance presented by Thrill'Em Films.

The scene is wonderful, with shot transitions between the film, the audience and the audience watching the film, which is more elaborate than the simpler sequence in "Mabel's Dramatic Career". The film-within-the film parodies film conventions, namely of Westerns and melodramas, and Swain is delightful in mocking contemporary acting styles. Additionally, the sequence impressively creates an atmosphere of the movie-going experience, which becomes more powerful with the age of the film, which itself was recreating a recent past of the nickelodeon age. It adds to the sense of the wonder of cinema that it's mocking, and even displays the work that goes into showing films (the one-man orchestra, the projectionist and such). "A Movie Star" is a significant film in how it turns in on itself, and (unusual given the typically outdated Keystone slapstick) it has actually improved with age.