Trial Marriages (1907)
**** (out of 4)
Excellent Biograph short has a man reading an article by a female writer talking about the advantages of trial marriages and he sees it as nothing but a joke so he decides to try it out. During his little trial run he ends up with a crying woman, a jealous woman, a tired woman and eventually a woman with seven kids. This is without question the greatest comedy I've seen from this era of film-making. The story is just downright hysterical and at times I had tears running down my face from laughing so hard. The jealous woman is probably the funniest episode as she has a breakdown when she catches the man talking to the female servant. The film runs just over 12-minutes and there are very few seconds where something funny isn't happening. This is certainly one of the greatest comedies out there. G.W. Bitzer did the cinematography.