Review of Cohen Saves the Flag

In his early Keystone days Mack Sennett was always looking for new ideas. He picked up the habit of finding some interesting event, sending a crew out and then constructing a story later, filling in the details with pick-ups at the studio. The best known example of probably KID AUTO RACES AT VENICE -- because it is the introduction of Charlie Chaplin. A better example is A MUDDY ROMANCE, shot when Sennett learned they were going to drain Echo Lake.

For this one, Sennett got permission to shoot around the battle sequences of Thomas Ince's THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, which is why you see a huge battle raging with dozens of extras. It offers amazing production values, but what it comes down to in the end is what this sort of Keystone production did in the end: a couple of comics mugging for the camera and a plot of sorts imposed by Keystone's superior editing -- in this case, Sergeant Cohen (Ford Sterling) and Lieutenant Goldberg (Henry Lehrman) are fighting for the affections of Mabel Normand on the fields of Gettysburg and a pig farm in a sort of prototypical version of WHAT PRICE GLORY? Sterling is pretty restrained and not terribly interesting, probably so he doesn't overwhelm Lehrman, but Mabel looks good on top of a horse towards the end.