De mésaventure van een Fransch heertje zonder pantalon aan het strand te Zandvoort

Willy Mullens is caught at hgh tide at the beach. In crossing the water back to dry land, he takes off his shoes to avoid ruining them. He also takes off his trousers. He loses the trousers entirely and soon is running away, pursued, for some reason, by a mob.

It doesn't make much sense, but then neither do a lot of the chase comedies of the era, and for the first few seconds of Mullens' little run, I was grinning widely.

As for titles longer than the movie itself, I checked out THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES OR HOW I FLEW FROM LONDON TO PARIS IN 25 HOURS 11 MINUTES. True, the title is longer, but that movie is more than two hours in length.

In this Dutch short film, the protagonist is seen dowsing off in a beach chair, finding himself stuck in the flood. In order to keep his trousers dry, he takes them off, to the dismay of the police at the beach. The rest of the film is the subsequent chase of the French gentleman.

This film is one of the first fiction films made in the Netherlands, and one of the lesser few that has survived. The movie is very amusing especially in the chase scenes, in which all the background characters wave at the camera, laughing all the time. The film is not so funny for its story, but as a document of its time it is highly enjoyable.