I'm sure most silent comedy buffs are familiar with this beloved chestnut, now available in Kino's "Slapstick Encyclopedia" collection, but even viewers unfamiliar with Keystone comedies are likely to get a kick out of it. 'Oldfield' pokes fun at conventions of stage melodrama that were considered hokey even in 1913, and the actors overplay with great vigor. Legendary producer Mack Sennett portrays the lovesick rube, and Mabel Normand flashes her big brown eyes at the camera, but it's Ford Sterling who makes the strongest impression. This may well have been Sterling's most memorably hammy performance, and he looks like he's having the time of his life: he struts, grimaces, and twirls his mustache, then summons his henchmen with a snap of his fingers, and they instantly appear. Sterling was the biggest male star on the Keystone lot before Chaplin arrived, usually in villainous or unsympathetic roles, and he gives this one everything's he's got. Our hero Barney Oldfield is the only one who underplays; he was a celebrity when this movie was made, a real-life race track star, back when those guys still wore goggles and scarves. Mr. Oldfield comes off as a rather bland, good-natured fellow surrounded by lunatics.
This is the kind of movie (much parodied in later days) where the villain, jilted by the girl, seeks vengeance by having her tied to the railroad tracks. The suspenseful finale features the frenetic Keystone Cops, a last minute rescue, and a surprise closing gag that is genuinely funny. As noted above, the melodramatic plotting would have been familiar to audiences of the time from stage plays, but the cinema itself was still such a novelty it all must have seemed new again, what with the added bonus of verisimilitude, i.e. real train tracks and a real train, enhanced with a bit of rudimentary cinematic trickery in the shot where Mabel is rescued, right in the nick of time. No wonder the actors threw themselves into the project with such gusto: it must have been thrilling to participate in something so new and exciting. That sense of exhilaration still comes across when we view this film today.
