User Reviews

This 1913 Mack Sennett effort is good enough to have been copied later in animation history. When you watch this film, put these into place place - Mack Sennett - the shy suitor who is a good guy (Dudley DoRight)

Mabel Normand - the damsel in distress (Nell Fenwick)

Ford Sterling - the mustached villain (Snydley Whiplash)

The plot pretty much follows the spoof of the cartoon but this is decades earlier. It is well done because it is short & the action is pretty much non-stop. It has the classic chase / race scenario which was used decades later in Smokey & The Bandit.

Throw in the Keystone Cops, Barney Oldfield and his race car, chaining the damsel to the rail road tracks, the hand car, & stealing a locomotive, & this has all the elements you want for 10 or 11 minutes of fun & suspense.

For 1913, it is well done. This is film making by the seat of your pants. It's a good thing that Sennett & company held onto theirs as this early film is one of the reasons film became a growing industry. This is a classic film but not a great film. It is the Keystone to a growing number of gems produced later & inspired a cartoon too boot.

(***OOOPS - THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS***)

It is fascinating to note how most people of today take it for granted that acting in silent films consisted of purely melodramatic overplay, worthy of little more than unintentional laughter, when, in fact, what may have founded this impression in a lot of people are excerpts from films which were supposed to poke fun at that kind of acting. Released in the summer of 1913, the Keystone comedy BARNEY OLDFIELD'S RACE FOR A LIFE has become one of the most iconic films of this sort. Although its initial success may be largely explained with the appearance of the real Barney Oldfield, a celebrity in the early days of "auto-racing," the film still remains quite funny, and the story, although ridiculously simple (as well as simply ridiculous!), is well accomplished.

Mabel Normand is kidnapped by Ford Sterling, as the latter seeks revenge on the girl as she refused to flirt with him. With the help of two assistants, she is being tied to some railroad- tracks, whereupon Ford hastily locates a locomotive and sets off to complete his evil plan. In the meantime, however, Mabel's boyfriend, played by Mack Sennett, is made aware of the situation, and he gets hold on Barney Oldfield in order to save her before the locomotive arrives at Mabel's spot...and there you got your race. Yes, a ridiculous story, but no less a spot-on, somewhat heartless parody on the tear-jerking melodramas that bombarded theater stages throughout the 19th century, and which had recently begun to blossom again in the still-new medium of film.

Inevitably, the strength of the cast is highly significant if such broad parody is to work, and BARNEY OLDFIELD'S RACE FOR A LIFE provides at least two of Keystone's most accomplished talents with Mabel Normand and Ford Sterling. The latter performs perhaps one of his most memorable acts ever; although I do know Sterling's tendency to overplay is not everyone's cup of tea, this is one of the instances where it works superbly. He is no less than brilliant here; his character may be the quintessential villain of melodrama, as his characteristics would probably seem familiar even to people not well acquainted with silent films. A favorite moment of mine occurs early on, when Ford whistles for his assistants to turn up, which they do instantly; as he whistles a second time, they disappear equally fast. Mabel Normand is also good; overplay she does, but that is, as stated, the point. Mack Sennett is far less colorful, though; although reasonably competent, Sennett was simply no actor, in the sense that he was unable to vary the behavior of his screen character depending on the context of the film. He is barely any different here, in the midst of a parody on melodrama, than he is in any other film in which he appeared.

As a final note: some reviewers have expressed disgust with the last part, where the entire troupe of Keystone Kops is shot to death, but while I did not find this bit to be the least funny myself, it is crucial in order for the final gag to work; the Kops tumble down in realistic manner, which is shocking as the film up to that point has been quite cartoonish, but this is typically followed by the most cartoonish instance in the entire film, with Ford committing suicide by strangling himself to death. Dramaturgically speaking, the final gag would not have worked as well without that brief contrast.

I might spoil a few of the gags for anyone who's reading this before having seen the film, so WARNING: Spoilers herein.

Mack Sennett received his apprenticeship under D.W. Griffith when they both worked at Biograph. "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life", "The Bangville Police" and surely many other Keystone shorts spoof D.W. Griffith's last-minute rescue flicks; this film is particularly a parody of "The Girl and Her Trust" (1912). I've read that Hank Mann, who was the chief Kop for a time, conceived the Keystone Kops, the company's greatest legacy. Mann likely did so after watching French chase comedies, which often featured odd-looking policemen foolishly chasing, amongst other foolish chasers, after some fool. Additionally, mal-driven automobiles, often disobeying physics, were a popular theme in French comedies, as far back as those by Georges Méliès, as well as by Briton Robert W. Paul and others. Trick-shots, fast-motion and such were also mainstays of slapstick by the time Mack Sennett founded Keystone.

Apparently, "Hoffmeyer's Legacy" (1912) was the first appearance of the Keystone Kops, but "The Bangville Police" of the following year is said to have popularized the inept gang of policemen. The Keystone Kops appear in this film, but without model-Ts. I appreciate that Keystone heightened the anarchy and disrespect for authority and materialism prominent in farce, and the vast influence it has had on subsequent films. Nevertheless, the outstanding contribution that Sennett and Keystone made to comedy wasn't that their films disobeyed physical laws and rationality of our world (that was nothing new); it was that they disobeyed the laws of the world within film. Sennett is able to reproduce the suspense of a Griffith film, even add to it (the double exposure effect, or matte shot, for a last-second rescue), but in how Sennett gets to the climax is anti-Griffith--contrary to film conventions. For example, another poster complained of a lack of causation in this film: where's the villainous rival's motivation for abducting Mabel and attempting to murder her? One might as well ask why the villain went to the trouble of trying to run her over with a train when he could have simply shot her. It's an easy answer: shooting Mabel wouldn't have been funny, shooting the Keystone Kops was.

It's the best gag in the film. After poking fun at Griffith and disobeying film conventions, here, Sennett diverted from the conventions of his own films--the Kops don't rescue anyone, and they die. Sennett was a lousy goof of an actor, though. Unfortunately, he and racecar driver Barney Oldfield, who has no sense of the camera or acting, are the rescuers in this picture. Mabel Normand, of course, knows what she's doing. Fred Sterling is a surprise, though; I knew he was as professional as anyone at the time, but, here, he has created a forcible character in a short time. As far as I know, it could be the first great creation of an outlandish villain, who schemes irrationally elaborate plots, continuously minds strutting his perfervid dastardliness, while making sure we know he's positioning and posturing for the camera. Sterling's villain here and other such Keystone characters must have been a great influence on subsequent comedies, especially cartoons, such as the Looney Tunes franchise. The props are cartoon-like, too. Where would we be if it weren't for the cliché of a woman constrained to train tracks in dire need?

This is an enriching experience if you've seen what it copies and spoofs and know what it influences. It's worth watching, while making the related unsatisfactory films worth watching, as well.