A SEVERE TEST is a short silent comedy clocking in at just 17 minutes. This features manages to pack a great deal of plot into that brief running time, including multiple twists and characters, but the main problem is that as a comedy it just doesn't work very well. The performers give typically exaggerated performances which you'd expect from the era, but they're far too serious to work and at times melodrama wins out over laughs. The inclusion of one cross-dressing character in black face is a mark of the times. In the end A SEVERE TEST works as a historical document from the era, but unlike rival horror fare such as the short FRANKENSTEIN film it has little that modern viewers can recognise or identify with.
3 Reviews
A Domestic Comedy
boblipton12 January 2016
After a year of marriage, Vinnie Burns neglects to kiss Marian Swayne goodbye one morning. Worried he no longer loves her, Marian decides to send a suicide note to him. Matters soon get out of hand in this ridiculous but not very funny comedy of manners.
Director Alice Guy was arguably the first motion picture director, but after almost two decades of work, her technique was getting extremely old-fashioned. Although the situation seems like a good idea for a comedy -- indeed, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew would do a least one very funny film with a similar plot -- Madame Guy directs her actors in a straightforward manner that does not offer many laughs. Indeed, the presence of an actor in blackface may render the entire matter unpalatable to a modern viewer otherwise disposed to enjoy this work.
Director Alice Guy was arguably the first motion picture director, but after almost two decades of work, her technique was getting extremely old-fashioned. Although the situation seems like a good idea for a comedy -- indeed, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew would do a least one very funny film with a similar plot -- Madame Guy directs her actors in a straightforward manner that does not offer many laughs. Indeed, the presence of an actor in blackface may render the entire matter unpalatable to a modern viewer otherwise disposed to enjoy this work.
A Stupid Test
Cineanalyst9 April 2020
Despite being newlyweds, as the introductory title from the print I saw from Harpodeon states, a wife believes that her husband no longer loves her--because he didn't kiss her before leaving for work, I guess. So, she plans the first of the film's stupid pranks; she'll fake her suicide. She writes a suicide letter to her husband, and she writes another letter explaining the prank to her friend. Being stupid, however, the wife mixes up the letters. In turn, the husband decides to play a prank on the wife; he'll send her a note of his fake remarriage. Being stupid, however, the remarriage notice ends up in the newspaper. Outdated jokes involving a deaf old man and an actor in blackface follow. Despite the bad actors laughing hysterically at their own ridiculous pranks, "A Severe Test" isn't funny, and it's poorly made even for 1913. Even many of Alice Guy Blaché's Gaumont pictures from a decade ago are superior, technically and otherwise.
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