At some point during the early years of silent cinema someone came up with a clever idea for a surprise opening gag: start your film abruptly with an action sequence, such as an abduction, a wild fight or an attempted murder. Just as viewers begin to react, pull back the camera and reveal that we're on the set of a movie being made, and what we think we've seen unfolding is nothing but motion picture make believe. This is usually followed by that ever popular sub-genre, Hollywood self-parody.
With so many early films lost forever it would be just about impossible to figure out who first came up with this notion, but by the time Snub Pollard and his crew made The Dumb-Bell in 1922 the gag had clearly been around long enough for filmmakers to explore variations on the theme. This film opens like a typical Pollard comedy and unfolds that way for several minutes, the only oddity being that Snub is dressed as a doddering old man instead of playing his usual persona. We're told he's a sick man, and we see that he's surrounded by physicians who insist on denying him the only pleasures he has left: coffee, cigars, and rich foods. So, as soon as the doctors leave, old Snub sneaks around his living room and raids his hiding places for dough-nuts, hard-boiled eggs, tobacco, etc. Just as we're starting to think this looks like it's going to be a pretty funny short, the camera pulls back and we find that we're on the set of a movie, and Snub is an actor. Crew members and neurotic producers are suddenly dashing back and forth. Cue the in-jokes!
Actually, by the time the film-within-a-film motif has been revealed there isn't all that much footage left for Hollywood satire (this is just a one-reeler after all), but events and gags roll along anyhow in an amusing fashion. When the director quits in a temperamental tizzy Snub himself is given the job. The Sick Old Man story is abandoned, and instead our newly elevated auteur directs Marie Mosquini in a blood-and thunder melodrama. Things go badly, however. Marie is supposed to step out of a hiding place and stab a uniformed officer in the back, but every time she does so the actor ruins the scene by grabbing the wrong part of his anatomy. Although the short wraps up soon afterward on a somewhat anticlimactic note this sequence is funny enough to keep us amused almost to the end. The Dumb-Bell can be classed with such films as Chaplin's Behind the Screen, Mack Sennett's The Daredevil, and the Our Gang comedy Dogs of War, films in which the movie-making process itself is depicted as rollicking slapstick comedy.
One inside joke: the director we first see in The Dumb-Bell (played by Noah Young) is a difficult, unstable character who quits his job in a fury. As soon as Snub is appointed director he too becomes crazed and soon loses his composure; it seems to come with the job. Meanwhile the actual director of this film, Charley Chase, plays a barely noticeable cameo role as an actor who stands by on the set, debonair in a top hat, calmly watching the proceedings. Looks like there was one director on hand who could keep his head while all others about were losing theirs.
With so many early films lost forever it would be just about impossible to figure out who first came up with this notion, but by the time Snub Pollard and his crew made The Dumb-Bell in 1922 the gag had clearly been around long enough for filmmakers to explore variations on the theme. This film opens like a typical Pollard comedy and unfolds that way for several minutes, the only oddity being that Snub is dressed as a doddering old man instead of playing his usual persona. We're told he's a sick man, and we see that he's surrounded by physicians who insist on denying him the only pleasures he has left: coffee, cigars, and rich foods. So, as soon as the doctors leave, old Snub sneaks around his living room and raids his hiding places for dough-nuts, hard-boiled eggs, tobacco, etc. Just as we're starting to think this looks like it's going to be a pretty funny short, the camera pulls back and we find that we're on the set of a movie, and Snub is an actor. Crew members and neurotic producers are suddenly dashing back and forth. Cue the in-jokes!
Actually, by the time the film-within-a-film motif has been revealed there isn't all that much footage left for Hollywood satire (this is just a one-reeler after all), but events and gags roll along anyhow in an amusing fashion. When the director quits in a temperamental tizzy Snub himself is given the job. The Sick Old Man story is abandoned, and instead our newly elevated auteur directs Marie Mosquini in a blood-and thunder melodrama. Things go badly, however. Marie is supposed to step out of a hiding place and stab a uniformed officer in the back, but every time she does so the actor ruins the scene by grabbing the wrong part of his anatomy. Although the short wraps up soon afterward on a somewhat anticlimactic note this sequence is funny enough to keep us amused almost to the end. The Dumb-Bell can be classed with such films as Chaplin's Behind the Screen, Mack Sennett's The Daredevil, and the Our Gang comedy Dogs of War, films in which the movie-making process itself is depicted as rollicking slapstick comedy.
One inside joke: the director we first see in The Dumb-Bell (played by Noah Young) is a difficult, unstable character who quits his job in a fury. As soon as Snub is appointed director he too becomes crazed and soon loses his composure; it seems to come with the job. Meanwhile the actual director of this film, Charley Chase, plays a barely noticeable cameo role as an actor who stands by on the set, debonair in a top hat, calmly watching the proceedings. Looks like there was one director on hand who could keep his head while all others about were losing theirs.
