This is a mildly astounding film, made by the finest studio (MGM) in a year (1927) by which time silent feature films were incredible works of art; the timing of the actors, cutting, and overall pacing were pretty much perfect; and all of which had to be thrown out and started all over again with the introduction of sound. This film is doubly astounding when we learn that it was directed by Fatty Arbuckle, some years after he (or at least his name) had been banned from movies. Thus we get a 2-part picture: the first third or so focuses almost exclusively on Marion Davies, giving her patient time to explore and demonstrate her comic abilities; the remainder of the picture is given over to plot, with an increasingly frantic and overall quite imaginative screenplay that is quite fun to follow.
The influence of Buster Keaton (old comic partner of Arbuckle) is clearly in evidence in the opening scene: we start with a picturesque vision of Dutch citizens enjoying ice skating on a frozen canal; we cut to a shot of Marion Davies from the waist up, also apparently skating; but as we pull back, we see she is actually "skating" on two scrub brushes that are attached to her shoes, careening around a soapy floor. Very Keatonesque!
More bizarre is the bewildering variety of incredibly fat males sprinkled throughout the film. This includes children: in a scene with a couple dozen Dutch kids, we are treated to a dizzying array of really roly-poly boys. And the diminutive Ed Snitzer is several times comically contrasted to the Dutch bohemoths around him. I wonder what Fatty was thinking here...
Back to Marion Davies. Now I went through a period in my teens when I was infatuated by the Three Stooges. Now, 30 years later, I am astounded to see a silent female version of Curly Howard, fighting for 5 minutes with an uncooperative ironing board, complete with facial grimaces alternating between frustration and joy. Its proto-Curly! And when Davies tries to solve the problem of an uncooperative cow who keeps whacking her in the face with its tail as she tries to milk it, by tieing a brick to its tail, with the predictable result of the cow whacking her on the head with the brick - well this is a specific gag used by Curly and the Stooges in later films. Now I can't prove who copied who, but the connection from early silent comedy (Arbuckle) through late silent comedy (Davies) to sound slapstick (the Stooges) is fascinating.
The only inexplicable thing here is that the Dutch characters speak (through title cards) in English to each other, but because they don't speak English well, their sentences are quite fractured; thus, for example, one girl speaks of having "dislocated" her boyfriend, when she lost him. Get it? If they were meant to be talking in Dutch, the "translations" would be in proper English.
Overall, a fun and intriguing comedy, and smooth as silk.
