User Reviews

Looking at this Keystone short a century after its original release, the viewer has little context to understand the whys and wherefores. Three shabbily dressed fellows rent a room and proceed to put together a bomb. When their landlord discovers this, they kidnap his son, dangle him out a window with another bomb, while he runs around trying to get the police to deal with the "aner-kists." Perhaps it looks like modern terrorists, but this is actually class warfare at work. Ford Sterling is the landlord, with his billy-goat beard and his obnoxious manner. Ford specialized in inept, nasty authority figures for Keystone, from the Keystone Kops' chief to the landlord here -- think real estate mogul. Raymond Hatton and cohort are the foreign anarchists and everyone is unlikeable, except perhaps Dot Farley as Sterling's wife and Coy Watson who plays the baby.

In the world of Keystone, everyone is deserving of a kick in the pants except babies and lovers. If the anarchists blow themselves up, it is no less than they deserve. If the Keystone Kops are too lazy to follow up Sterling's complaints, they still fall into the water. Certainly, Sterling deserves to be tied up to a tree. There ain't no justice -- but at least the obnoxious get published.

Take a look at the editing while Sterling is racing back home and the baby is bouncing outside the window, about to be blown up by bomb. The changing viewpoints with the cuts speeding up slightly is very sophisticated and still works. Sennett and his staff had learned from D.W. Griffith and Keystone probably had the best editing in the industry at this period.

Plot In a Nutshell: A landlord foils his tenants' bomb plot, so they attempt to take revenge by threatening the life of his infant (the 'life' in the title).

Yes, this is a comedy, despite that plot description. And what a strange piece of business it is. Planting a bomb in a baby's bed doesn't have the ring of comedy to it, at least not by today's standards. So you can safely label this one of those that 'doesn't age well.'

In addition to the above, the following were in this 1913 film and seem odd to 21st-century eyes:

* Working out/exercising fully dressed in a suit was apparently completely normal * Leaving an infant home alone, unattended, was also somehow accepted practice * Policemen walking the beat did not carry firearms, only billy clubs * You could enter your local police station waving a handgun and the police won't bat an eye. They won't ask for a carry permit, not ask why you're waving it around in public, not try to subdue you, nothing. Good luck trying that today!

6/10. More valuable for a view into early-20th century 'norms' than for the attempts at comedy. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: Yes.

A Life in the Balance (1913)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This 1913 Mack Sennett short was made available in its 1923 re-issue version, which went under the title CRASHING TROUGH. In the film, Ford Sterling plays a desperate landlord who rents a room to three men. He's happy to get the money but then he starts to get a bad feeling and soon he does something to them, which causes them to seek revenge by kidnapping his son in order to play a prank. Ones sense of humor must have been pretty wild in 1913 if Sennett thought he could brings laughs out of a kidnapping. I'm not sure what was changed or altered in this 1923 re-issue so it's really not fair to really judge the 1913 version. From what I saw it was actually a fairly funny picture with Sterling once again delivering a fast and funny performance as the maniac who finds himself out of control. Dot Farley plays his wife who we see in a couple scenes and she's good as well. The actual kidnapping isn't played too serious and it does lead to a rather amusing finale.

One of the immensely funny creations the Keystone people occasionally turn out. A fine little baby is hung out of the window, apparently, in a basket attached to a spring muscle exerciser. The baby is given a bomb to play with. Three bomb throwers are the villains in the piece. It is a fine bit of extravagant burlesque and brings much laughter. - The Moving Picture World, April 19, 1913