Josh's Suicide (1911) User Reviews

Free at Last

[boblipton · 6/10 · 14 July 2017]

Country hick Fred Mace has grown tired of his wife's local social climbing. To get out of the marriage, he fakes his suicide and heads off to New York City to enjoy the peace and quiet.... and so does the new widow.

If the modern movie fan knows Mack Sennett, it is as the proprietor of Keystone, where slapstick reigned supreme. However, before he was lured away, Sennett spent several years at Biograph, learning how to write, direct, perform and produce movies from the man he called "The Master", D.W. Griffith. By 1910, he was directing and producing comedies for the company.

Usually they were situational comedies, about young men who loved a girl in vain.... at least until the end. Usually, the people looked and acted pretty much as they did in Griffith's pictures, with only minor mayhem. Occasionally, though, he got to turn out something that was darker and wilder, like this one.

"Now for a joy ride, by gum!"

[wmorrow59 · 7/10 · 21 July 2017]

This very brief comedy, directed for the American Biograph Company by Mack Sennett, offers a rudimentary version of the sort of marital farce the director would develop further, embellish, and perfect. At Biograph Sennett had been granted his own comedy unit, and his work on shorts such as this one would eventually lead to his departure, along with several of his key players, and the founding of his legendary fun factory Keystone the following year.

Our featured comic in this short is Fred Mace, one of Sennett's early stars. His Josh is a rustic character who provokes friction with his wife Matilda, when she hosts a party and he shows up in his ragged work clothes. Ordered out, he loses his temper and decides to go on a spree. Before doing so, he leaves her a note that implies he has taken his life. Instead, he takes a train to New York City, and goes on a sight-seeing tour with a pair of young lovelies. Matilda—who does not appear to be especially grief stricken at the loss of her husband—also decides, meanwhile, to go to NYC with a young admirer. Needless to say, the paths of Josh and Matilda soon cross.

The plot is very much the sort of thing that would later serve as a blueprint for Keystone stars such as Ford Sterling, Mabel Normand, Roscoe Arbuckle, etc. In this early incarnation the comedy is fairly low-key, compared to the sort of wild slapstick eruptions that would become a Sennett specialty. When Josh and Matilda encounter each other on a double-decker bus the ensuing fireworks are rather mild, although it's a safe bet this short must have amused viewers in 1911.

Josh's Suicide is a recent rediscovery, and it has been beautifully restored. Happily, the film is complete and picture quality is excellent. Perhaps the most interesting element for today's viewers is the travelogue aspect. Josh's spree in the big city offers us images of the old Pennsylvania Station, Grant's Tomb, the shops of Fifth Avenue—visible in a beautifully composed shot from the top of a double-decker bus—and the New York Public Library, seen here the very year it opened. Unless someone invents a "Wayback Machine," this is the closest any of us are going to come to seeing what the world of the early 20th century actually looked like.