The Water Nymph

The Water Nymph (1912)

*** (out of 4)

Historic film as this was the first one released through Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios. In the film Mack takes his girlfriend (Mabel Normand) to the beach where his father (Ford Sterling) is also at. The father doesn't realize that this girl belongs to his son so he begins hitting up on her. THE WATER NYMPH has several interesting aspects to it other than just the fact it was the first from the studio. The funny thing is that there's a sequence where Normand puts on her bathing suit and goes out to jump off a diving board. Apparently this sequence was so popular that it gave Sennett the idea of forming his beauties. It's certainly funny to watch this sequence today because the bathing suit would be like a full dress compared to what we see today. The film has a pretty good, fast pace to it that actually makes it go by rather quickly. I thought Sterling was quite funny in the role of the flirtatious father and Normand comes off good too. Fans of Sennett's brand of humor should enjoy this one even if the majority of the running time just features Normand jumping off a diving board.

Looked at in the context of history, THE WATER NYMPH, the first release of the Keystone company, is a transitional film. Like Sennett's Biograph films, there is still an eagle on the title card and the characters start out looking normal enough -- mama, poppa, Mabel and Mack, although their movements seem a bit broader than at Biograph.

It is with the second dialogue card that we start to notice the changes. It reads "His father -- a faithful husband when locked in." What is going on here? Where are the easily demarcated characters of the melodrama? Whence the casually offered violence and hand-stroking and how could Mabel wear such a revealing bathing suit? Where did Ford Sterling get that ridiculous tie? We are suddenly no longer in the world of Biograph melodrama, or even the world in which Sennett set his own comedies for Biograph. We are in Sennett's own askew world in which the id, superego and the libido are suddenly laid bare, and in more than the metaphorical sense! The audience sees what they imagine doing -- terribly inappropriate actions, but enormously funny, because this is not the audience of polite stage dramas at a dollar a ticket. It's the rough audience of the nickelodeon and they can't afford that dollar. Their justice is not administered in courts before judges, but in the street when they can get it or at the hands of the police when they can not.

Sennett's world is just as unreal as D.W. Griffith's world, but it is just as carefully and artistically formed. His cameramen are just as good, his editors will soon be superior and his vision appealed to the poor better. The people might be grotesques, but it was the world they knew and if the rich got kicked in the pants more often than the poor, well, they had had it coming for a long, long time.

Mabel Normand and her sweetheart go to the beach and play a trick on the boyfriend's father.

Normand performed her own diving stunts for this film, which was the first Keystone comedy. Notably, the film precedes, and may have been the direct inspiration for, the Sennett Bathing Beauties performers first featured in 1915. The connection is rather obvious, of course.

This is another early showcase for Normand, who really ought to be seen on the same level as Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton. Arguably she did not make the impact they did, but one would be hard-pressed to think of any female comedian of her era who stood out nearly as much.

I just discovered this silent comedy short on the one-disc DVD set called Female Comediennes. It stars Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand. They're a loving couple but Mack's father doesn't seem to realize this as he seems to be flirting with Mabel while his wife's not around! To tell the truth, both times I watched this, I didn't find it funny but since this was the first for Sennett's Keystone studios, it is an interesting artifact. So The Water Nymph is worth a look and nothing more...

Mack Sennett assembles a strong cast for his first Keystone comedy - and the first appearance by Keystone's Bathing Beauties, apparently - in which he plays a young man who persuades his new girlfriend (Mabel Normand) to 'vamp'his father (Ford Sterling) at the beach. Not typical of the knockabout slapstick with which the studio is associated, but it has its charms.