Part of the "slumming" section of the Edition Filmmuseum two-disc set "Screening the Poor," "Two Violinists" features two bourgeois women who have a "peculiar idea," whereby they work for money! Although the film begins with the implication that they dress down, hence "slumming," to go busking so as to aid two poor women who are staying home to care for their bed-ridden mother, the picture quickly slides into a mistaken-identity farce. The hoity-toity ladies are arrested for their busking before being bailed out by their husbands, for which they all have a laugh before deciding to continue their fun by dressing up and parading the poor women, for which they pull them away from that bedridden mother. The obliviousness of the classism is striking.

Otherwise, the film is unremarkable even for being from 1911, largely following the dated tableau style of title cards describing proceeding actions, and the actors resorting to broad theatrical gestures for the distant camera. I continue to be intrigued by the use of music as an important plot point in many so-called "silent" films, though. Scoring of the film for DVD was provided on piano and violin by Günter A. Buchwald.

(From 35mm film at Deutsche Kinemathek)

helpful•1