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| The man Charlie called The Professor |
Max Linder stands tall in the land of daft with a range
of ridiculous that stands the test of silly even after all these
D'Artanians…
After this film, the normally sober
New York Times – was it you Mordaunt? –
was reaching for its thesaurus for new ways to describe this
“whole-hearted
mockery”, this
“travesty” of Doug Fairbanks version of the Dumas tale which, it
claimed, worked by the method of
“absurdification“.
The film features the famous three swordsmen, Porpoise,
Octopus and Walrus, not to mention the flashing blade called Dart-In-Again and
runs ridiculous parallel to the Fairbank’s film’s romanticism. The Three Musketeers
is outlandish enough and perhaps only a Frenchman could lampoon it as well as
this – respectful tongue firmly in both cheeks.
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| Crossing the Channel |
It’s the kind of intense humour you’d later expect of the
Marx Brothers and whilst it has the physicality of Keaton and Chaplin it seems
more overtly literate and literal in a surreal way. Donkeys love cows and our
hero spends three months riding backwards on his humble steed whilst the
Queen’s chamber quintet play jazz and the action counts down with the plucking
of the remaining four hairs on a monk’s head.
Max is Dart-In-Again also known as Knockout and he leaves
his father’s farm, to find fame in Paris. He travels by donkey (Jazbo the
Horse!) much to the chagrin of beast’s Friesian friend: the tracks of the cow’s
tears mark the depths of her loss.
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| "...ravishing yet love-starved..." |
We cut to the court of King Louis Xiii where we find his
Queen, Anne (Caroline Rankin) “…the ravishing yet love-starved wife…” who, it
turns out is hardly the first but definitely the latter. She’s been entertained
by her band of merry maiden musicians who raise their sax and trombones in a
clear display of
jazz… the first of
many delightful anachronisms – there’s even a handsome cab that’s actually a
cab.
The scarcely regal King (Frank Cooke) returns, nonplussed
from his travels and the scheming Li'l Cardinal Richie-Loo (Bull Montana)
watches on with his pet monk (Bynunsky Hyman) – half man-half pet… a bizarre
sight.
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| Bull Montana and Bynunsky Hyman |
The Queen’s paramour, Lord Duke Poussy Bunkumin (Harry
Mann) walks on tenterhooks like Felix the Cat with her lady in waiting,
Constance Bonne-aux-Fieux (Jobyna Ralston) to rendezvous with his sweetheart
and, as he takes her prized jewellery as a memento, the Cardinal, perched,
precariously on a stack of chairs spots the moment!
Meanwhile… Max makes his way to Paris where he mistakenly
rescues a poor man from harassment at the hands of the the cheesy villain,
Roquefort (Jean de Limur). He’s mistaken, the pair were merely sharing a joke,
and is duly knocked unconscious, tied backward on his mule and sent off… “Three
months later…” runs the title card as he wakes up many miles away.
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| Jobyna Ralston |
Arriving in Paris, Dart fails to impress a local maiden
and decides that he needs to trade in his four-legged friend for some new
clothes. Suitably attired he bumps into Constance and creates an immediate
impression.
Now, I hear you ask, what about the three other guys? Dart heads to the musketeers recruiting office
where he presents a letter from hid daddy to the diminutive “Goliath” in charge
of proceedings – a very un-PC sight gag that plays upon preconceptions of size
and its relative importance.
The three elite musketeers enter: Porpoise (Clarence
Wertz), Octopus (Charles Mezzetti) and
Walrus (John J. Richardson), only to be chided for killing just 99 of the
Duke’s guards, thereby missing the cremation discount on a hundred dead.
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| Porpoise, Octopus and Walrus... possibly not in that order. |
Worry not, pledges Dart tomorrow we can kill the extra
one and a hundred more: the crazed merchandising of death. One by one Dart
arranges to see the three the next day “one o’clock by the cemetery wall…” and
he greets them by leaping from what looks at least a fifteen foot wall – Linder
is every inch a match for Fairbanks in his stunt work and his swordplay is not
only adept but so well timed he manages to maintain the incessant beat of
tricks and gags.
The musketeers are ambushed at their rendezvous and team
up with their new fourth member to defeat the Duke’s assassins – no worries
about that discount today. There’s more daring do as the team celebrates as
Constance, looking on, sighs “Oh
Knockout, Knockout, the Samson of my dreamless nights!” what is keeping her
awake?!
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| His regal majesty |
But trouble’s ahead as the King, prompted by his
stinky-cheese advisor, asks the Queen to wear her jewels for the ball. She’s
bound to get found out unless, unless… Knockout Dart can get to London and
retrieve them from her lover…
The films accelerates to its conclusion with a
bewildering pace as telephones inform a guard on a motorcycles of the musketeers’
rescue plan and our hero sets sail for England on his horse. It’s great fun and
the invention never slackens as Dart is surrounded by dozens of swords pointing
at his head only to simply duck, leaving a platoon of the Duke’s guards pinned
by their own swords…
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| A tight spot? |
Linder struggled to find the level of success in
Hollywood that he had enjoyed, pre-war, in Europe – he was making films in the
1900s - and he began to doubt himself after this film became another relative
failure
“…I sense that I'm no longer
funny; I have so many preoccupations that I can no longer concentrate on my
film character ... The public is mildly amused by my situations, but this
evening where were the explosions of laughter that we hear when Charlie's on
the screen?...Make people laugh, it’s easy to say make people laugh, but I
don't feel funny anymore."
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| Jobyna and Max |
His comedy is as sophisticated as anyone else from the
period and is still genuinely beguiling. Linder’s mental health had been
fragile after his war experience and seemingly he would never fully recover and
yet, on this evidence he was still funny – very, very funny – and transcendentally so.
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