This Czech farce with a title translated as "The Lovers of an Old Criminal," or better yet "An Old Gangster's Molls," may be overly broad--puns always intended, and I make no apologies--but it's certainly an improvement over the feature-length Boy Scouts advertisement and only other film from director Svatopluk Innemann that I've seen, "Be Prepared!" (1923), including some cinematically reflexive amusement. Its humor revolves around mistaken identity and is a bit of the sort of upper-class sex comedy one could see being improved by a more skillful filmmaker like Ernst Lubitsch ("The Marriage Circle" (1924), "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1925), "So This Is Paris" (1926), among others).
The plot is meandering, and I'll probably forget the basic scenario if I don't write it down here. Some wealthy resident of a mansion balks at the arrangement of marrying a woman he doesn't know despite falling in love at first sight with another, or some such silly movie notion, and who is also his first cousin. The sort of inbreeding ideal that was the downfall of the Habsburgs that once ruled over Czechoslovakia and much of Europe. The man in this one inherited a factory and may be a count or something, which tracks. This initial storyline, however, becomes but a subplot to the main plight of the nepotist's clownish uncle, who of course is also his sweetheart's father. He abandoned his wife years ago and apparently didn't know he had a daughter, though. A good guy, as his nephew insists. Anyways, the nephew employs his uncle to pretend to be him so as to scare off the the woman he's arranged to marry. The uncle's identity is further mistaken by his resemblance to a criminal. High jinks ensue.
All of this is made stranger by the indisputable fact that Anny Ondráková, who plays the woman they're trying to scare off, is delightful and the highlight of the picture, including adding some actual sex appeal to the sex comedy. Subsequently known as Anny Ondra, she became credited as the first Hitchcock blonde and married boxer Max Schmeling. Also good to know based on her character here that debutants carrying around small dogs as an accessory isn't a recent phenomenon, nor is slumming for that matter, as she's attracted by what she believes to be the underworld lifestyle of her supposed fiancé. While on the other hand I didn't care for the inconsistent and mugging slapstick of Vlasta Burian, for whom the notes for the Czech National Film Archive's streaming of the film claims to have been regarded as "the King of Czech Comedians," the mistaken-identity plot is neatly reflexive. What is screen acting, after all, if not another such form of masquerade. Moreover, the doubled nature of cinematic recording is related to the doppelgängers of uncle and criminal, as played by Burian in dual roles. This entire plot is for the most part also told by another visual media within that of film--in this case, the fugitive's pictures in newspapers. I also like that the means to tell the uncle and criminal apart is by a scar, which intentionally or not alludes to the semiotics of C. S. Peirce that thereafter became a prominent feature of film theory studies--the indexicality of photography. Heck, speaking of film theory, the choppy editing here almost takes on at times a Kuleshov effect. Interesting stuff... if only it were funny, too.
(Note: Part of the otherwise wonderful and appreciated streaming for free of "A Season of Classic Films" by the Czech Archive, my only reservation throughout the series has been the atrocious modern scores that make no effort to be felicitous to the silent images. The one here is no exception.)
