I will come clean: I sport a pedestrian's knowledge about Italian cinema before the advent of neo-realism. But this was a pleasant watch for any friend of silent comedies. The director Guido Brignone made nearly a hundred films between 1916 and 1959. In this comedy-adventure, you can see there is already experience and general knowledge about the popular trends of cinema. Stylistically, this owes most to Douglas Fairbanks, though in form, it greatly evokes the French film serials of the 1910's.
The hero of the film is Ajax (Carlo Aldini), who is courting a woman, who has a parrot named Socrates. The romance does not flow so smoothly because of her ways, but as the parrot goes loose, Ajax gets to run all over the city, and the film becomes a nicely-paced joy to watch. There were subplots too, but this film is at its weakest when it is attempting to tell a story.
The film includes an abundance of running, also jumping, climbing, the general things you would expect from a film of this sort. The movie does not reach the heights of the films that it is emulating, but it seems sincere in its affection to the genre. The running time of approximately an hour is just about right. Cinematography is nothing special, but it seems that the film used actual locations for most of it, instead of sets, which gives the film a feeling of fresh air, and a lively, 1920's groove. Not a classic, but an alright specimen of the time and the genre.
