Dough and Dynamite

Takes every aspect that works from the previous Chaplin-written-and-directed Keystone comedies, adds new formal accents/experiments, and hybridizes them into a two-reel show-stopper:

(1) From Laughing Gas, The Property Man, and Recreation, brings precise continuity of staging as anchor for cross-cutting frame-extension gags that playfully expand illusion of space - but this time also on the y axis vertically into the cellar/oven room (adding a 'mind the hole' dynamic that creates tension throughout the film).

(2) Draws from The New Janitor (specifically the safe in the President's office) in how objects are modeled for three dimensions and kept in deep focus to suggest opportunity for interaction;

(3) and, wow, does Chaplin's Pierre touch, bump, poke, trip over, get burned by or stuck in nearly every object or transitional space in frame, creating a sense of limitless narrative/gag potential (probably the most impressive aspect of the film)

(4) First short since His New Profession to feature not one but three medium close-ups - one with three-quarters modeling, and each of them story/character motivated - with a banger of a closer.

(5) Also notable: a third sub-plot - lending actual story logic to the final flurry of slapstick violence:

a. Pierre and Jacques (Chester Conklin) taking over the bakery operation as scabs

b. The striking bakery workers plotting revenge (intriguing anti-union sentiment here)

c. Monsieur la Vie (Fritz Shade) starting a fight with Chaplin/Conklin upon suspicion of them canoodling with his wife (Norma Nichols) in the 'bum covered in flour' bit

Favorite moments:

-- Pierre dropping a bag of flour on Jacques and just leaving him there passed out for a while

-- "The Fatal Loaf" intertitle

-- the 10 different 'burn hand on oven door' gags (laughed every time)